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Slips for Librarians to paste on Catalogue 
Cards. 

N. B. — Take out carefully, leaving about quarter of an inch 
at the back. To do otherwise would, in some casec, release 
other leaves. 

GOSSE, EDMUND WILLIAM. On Viol 
AND Flute. Selected Poems. By Edmund Wil- 
liam GossE. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1883, 
1 2 mo, pp. 250. 

ON VIOL AND FLUTE. Selected Poems. 
By Edmund William Gosse. New York : Henry 
Holt & Co., 1883. i2mo, pp. 250. 

POETRY. On Viol and Flute. Selected 
Poems. By Edmund William Gosse. New 
York: Henry Holt & Co., 1883, i2mo, pp. 250. 



ON VIOL AND FLUTE 



SELECTED POEMS 



BY 



EDMUND WILLIAM GOSSE 



N^v 



3^ 




NEW YORK 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

1883 



Tif ^^rs. 






/ ? 



A UTHOR's edition: 



TO 

MV FRIEND, 
RICHARD WATSON GILDER, 



I DEDICATE THIS 



MY FIRST AMERICAN PUBLICATION. 



PREFATORY NOTE. 



The following pieces are chiefly taken from two 
collections originally published in London, On Viol 
and Flute, in 1873, and New Poems, in 1879. A 
few of the others have appeared since the latter date 
in the " Cornhill Magazine " and in the " Century," 
The selection has been very kindly made for me 
by two literary friends in England, who will not 
permit me to thank them publicly by name, but to 
whom I am none the less grateful for taking out 
of my hands a task which I felt particularly ill- 
fitted to perform. 

E. W. G. 

London, Sept. 1882. 



, CONTENTS. 



The Apotheosis of St. Dorothy 

The Whitethroat 

The Return of the Swallows 

Lying in the Grass . 

The Death of Arnkel 

The Monad's Grave . 

A Year 

The Sons of Cydippe 

The Almond Tree 

On Dartmoor 

The Tomb of Sophocles 

February in Rome 

Greece and England 

The Burden of Delight 

The Mandrakes 

Etjthanasla. 

The Praise of Dionysus 



PAGE 
I 



13 

17 
22 
28 
30 
32 

37 
43 
46 

47 
4S 
52 
60 

qr 
92 



vi Co7itents 

PAGE 

The Loss of the Eurydice ., . . . .97 

Serenade 103 

Palingenesis 105 

The Sisters . no 

The Farm • . .123 

The Pipe-Player . . . . , . .130 

In the Bay 131 

Sunshine in March 141 

The Bath 143 

Ballad of Dead Cities 144 

The New Endymion 146 

Mistrust 157 

Wind of Provence 158 

Rondeau 163 

Moorland 165 

The Golden Isles 171 

The Charcoal-Burner 179 

Song 183 

Sestina 184 

On a Lute Found in a Sarcophagus . . . 187 

De Rosis Hxbernis 188 



Contents. 



LUBECK 

D. G. R. . 

To MY Daughter 

Alcyone 

The Well , 

Perfume 

ViLLANELLE . 

EPITHALAMirM 

1870-71 

Desiderium 

TiMASITHEOS 

The Houseleek 
Expectation 
My Own Grave 
The Cruise of the R 
Epilogue 



PAGE 

I go 
194 

195 
198 
200 
202 
203 
205 
207 
213 
216 
222 
225 
227 

235 
249 



THE APOTHEOSIS OF ST. DOROTHY. 

A maiden wandering from the east, 

A saint immaculately white, 

I saw in holy dream last night, 
Who rode upon a milk-white beast ; 

Across the woods her shadow fell. 

And wrought a strange and silent spell, 
A miracle. 

With firm-set eyes, and changeless face, 
She passed the cities, one by one ; 
Her hair was colored like the sun. 

And shed a glory round the place 
Where'er she came, she was so fair 
That men fell down and worshipped there 
In silent prayer. 



The Apotheosis of St. Dorothy. 
And ever in her sacred hands 
She bore a quaintly carven pyx 
Of serpentine and sardonyx, 
The wonder of those eastern lands ; 
Wherein were laid preserved in myrrh, 
The gifts of vase and thurifer 
She bore with her. 

And after many days she came 

To that high mountain, where are built 
The towers of Sarras, carved and gilt 

And fashioned like thin spires of flame : 
Then like a traveler coming home, 
She let her mild-eyed palfrey roam. 
And upward clomb. 

Oh ! then methought the turrets rang 
With shouting joyous multitudes. 
And through the tumult, interludes 



The Apotheosis of St. Dorothy. 
Of choral hosts, that played and sang ; 
Such welcome, since the world hath been, 
To singer, prophetess or queen, 
Was never seen. 

The golden gates were opened wide ; 

The city seemed a lake of light. 

For chrysopras and chrysolite 
Were wrought for walls on every side ; 

Without the town was meet for war, 

But inwardly each bolt and bar 
Shone like a star. 

Then, while I wondered, all the sky 
Above the city broke in light, 
And opened to my startled sight 

The heavens immeasurably high, 
A glorious effluence of air, 



4 The Apotheosis of St. Dorothy. 

And shining ether, pure and rare, 
Divinely fair. 

And, rising up amid the spires, 
I saw the saintly maiden go, 
In splendor like new-fallen snow, 

That robs the sun-rise of its fires ; 
So pure, so beautiful she was, 
And rose like vapory clouds that pass 
From dewy grass. 

Between her hands, the pyx of gold 
She held up like an offering sent 
To Him, who holds the firmament 

And made the starry world of old ; 
It glimmered like the golden star 
That shines on Christmas eve afar, 
Where shepherds are. 



The Apotheosis of St. Dorothy. 
And clouds of angels, choir on choir, 
Bowed out of heaven to welcome her, 
And poured upon her nard and myrrh, 
And bathed her forehead in white fire. 
And waved in air their gracious wings, 
And smote their kindling viol-strings 
In choral rings. 

But she, like one who swoons and sees 
A vision just before he dies, 
With quivering lips and lustrous eyes 

Gazed up the shining distances ; 
But soon the angels led her on 
Where fiercer cloudy splendor shone, 
And she was gone. 

And then a voice cried : — " This is she 
Who through great tribulation trod 
A thorny pathway up to God, 



6 The Apotheosis of St. Dorothy. 

The blessed virgin Dorothy. 

Still to the blessed Three-in-One 
Be glory, honor, worship done 
Beneath the sun ! " 



THE WHITETHROAT. 

An Essay in Criticism, 

I heard the Whitethroat sing 

Last eve at twilight when the wind was dead, 

And her sleek bosom and her fair smooth head 

Vibrated, ruffling, and her olive wing 

Trembled. So soft her song was that it seemed 

As though, in wandering through the copse at noon, 

She must have found the holy bough where dreamed 

The day-struck Nightingale, 

And, listening, must have overheard too soon 

The dim rehearsal of that golden tale 

That greets the laggard moon. 

But through the imitative strain, 



8 The Whitcthroat. 

Between each gentle cadence, and again 

When those clear notes she tried, for which her 

throat 
Was not so capable as fain, 
I joyed to hear her own peculiar note 
Through all the music float. 
But when the gentle song, that streamed away, 
Like some enamored rivulet that flows 
Under a night of leaves and flowering may, 
Died on the stress of its own lovely pain, 
Even as it died away, 
It seemed as if no influence could restrain 
The notes from welling in the Whitethroat's brain ; 
But with the last faint chords, on fluttering wing 
She rose, until she hung in sunset air ; 
A little way she rose, as if her care 
Were all to reach the heavens, her radiant goal, 
Then sank among the leaves. 



The Whitethroat. 
Pathetic singer ! with no strength to sing, 
And wasted pinions far too weak to bear 
The body's weight that mars the singing soul, 
In wild disorder, see, her bosom heaves ! 
Scarcely, with quivering plumes, 
She wins the sparse bough of that tulip-tree. 
Whose leaves unfinished ape her faulty song. 
Whose mystic flowers her delicate minstrelsy. 
But, hark ! how her rich throat resumes 
Its broken music, and the garden blooms 
Around her, and the flower that waited long. 
The vast magnolia, rends its roseate husk, 
And opens to the dusk ; 
Odor and song embalm the day's decline. 
Ah ! pulsing heart of mine, 
Flattered beyond all judgment by delight, 
This pleasing harmony, this gentle light. 
This soft and enervating breeze of flowers, 



lo llic ]VhitetJiroat. 

This magic antechamber of the night 

With florid tapestry of twilight hours, 

Is this enough for thee ? 

Lo ! from the summit of the tulip-tree 

The enamored Whitethroat answered " Yes ! O yes!" 

And once again, with passion and the stress 

Of thoughts too tender and too sad to be 

Enshrined in any melody she knew, 

She rose into the air ; 

And then, oppressed with pain too keen to bear, 

Her last notes faded as she downward flew. 

And she was silent. But the night came on ; 

A whisper rose among the giant trees, 

Between their quivering topmost boughs there shone 

The liquid depths of moonlight tinted air ; 

By slow degrees 

The darkness crept upon me unaware. 



The Whitethroat. 1 1 

The enchanted silence of the hours of dew 
Fell like a mystic presence more and more, 
Aweing the senses. Then I knew. 
But scarcely heard, thrilled through to the brain's 

core. 
The shrill first prelude of triumphant song, 
Cleaving the twilight. Ah ! we do thee wrong, 
Unequalled Philomela, while thy voice 
We hear not ; every gentle song and clear 
Seems worthy of thee to our poor noonday choice. 
But when thy true fierce music, full of pain. 
And wounded memory, and the tone austere 
Of antique passion, fills our hearts again, 
We marvel at our light and frivolous ear. 
Ah ! how they answer from the woodland glades ! 
How deep and rich the waves of music pour 
On night's enchanted shore ! 
From star-lit alleys where the elm-tree shades 



1 2 The Whitethroat. 

The hare's smooth leverets from the moon's distress, 

From pools all silvered o'er, 

Where water-buds their petals upward press, 

Vibrating with the song, and stir, and shed 

Their inmost perfume o'er their shining bed, 

Yea, from each copse I hear a bird. 

As by a more than mortal woe undone, 

Sing, as no other creature ever sang. 

Since through the Phrygian forest Atys heard 

His wild compeers come fluting one by one. 

Till all the silent uplands rang and rang. 



THE RETURN OF THE SWALLOWS. 

" Out in the meadows the young grass springs, 
Shivering with sap," said the larks, " and we 

Shoot into air with our strong young wings, 
Spirally up over level and lea ; 

Come, O Swallows, and fly with us 

Now that horizons are luminous ! 

Evening and morning the world of light, 
Spreading and kindling, is infinite I " 

Far away, by the sea in the south, 
The hills of olive and slopes of fern 

Whiten and glow in the sun's long drouth, 
Under the heavens that beam and burn ; 



14 The Return of the SiOallotus. 

And all the swallows were gathered there 
Flitting about in the fragrant air, 

And heard no sound from the larks, but flew 
Flashing under the blinding blue. 

Out of the depths of their soft rich throats 
Languidly fluted the thrushes, and said : 
"^ Musical thought in the mild air floats. 
Spring is coming and winter is dead I 
Come, O Swallows, and stir the air, 
For the buds are all bursting unaware. 

And the drooping eaves and the elm-trees long 
To hear the sound of your low sweet song." 

Over the roofs of the white Algiers, 

Flashingly shadowing the bright bazaar. 

Flitted the swallows, and not one hears 

The call of the thrushes from far, from far ; 



The Return of the Swa/iozas. 15 

Sighed the thrushes; then, all at once, 
Broke out singing the old sweet tones, 
Singing the bridal of sap and shoot, 
The tree's slow life between root and fruit. 

But just when the dingles of April flowers 

Shine with the earliest daffodils. 
When, before sunrise, the cold clear hours 

Gleam with a promise that noon fulfils, — 
Deep in the leafage the cuckoo cried, 
Perched on a spray by a rivulet side. 

Swallows, O Swallows, come back again 

To swoop and herald the April rain. 

And something awoke in the slumbering heart 
Of the alien birds in their African air. 

And they paused, and alighted, and twittered 
apart, 
And met in the broad white dreamy square. 



1 6 The Return of the Swalloivs. " " 

And the sad slave woman, who Hfted up 
From the fountain her broad-Hpped earthen cup, 

Said to herself, with a weary sigh, 
" To-morrow the swallows will northward fly ! " 



LYING IN THE GRASS. 

Between two golden tufts of summer grass, 

I see the world through hot air as through glass, 

And by my face sweet lights and colors pass. 

Before me dark against the fading sky, 
I watch three mowers mowing, as I lie : 
With brawny arms they sweep in harmony. 

Brown English faces by the sun burnt red. 

Rich glowing color on bare throat and head. 

My heart would leap to watch them, were I dead ! 

And in my strong young living as I lie, 
I seem to move with them in harmony, — 
A fourth is mowing, and the fourth am I. 



1 8 Lying in the Grass. 

The music of the scythes that glide and leap, 

The young men whistling as their great arms sweep, 

And all the perfume and sweet sense of sleep, 

The weary butterflies that droop their wings, 
The dreamy nightingale that hardly sings, 
And all the lassitude of happy things, 

Is mingling with the warm and pulsing blood 
That gushes through my veins a languid flood, 
And feeds my spirit as the sap a bud. 

Behind the mowers, on the amber air, 

A dark-green beech-wood rises, still and fair, 

A white path winding up it like a stair. 

And see that girl, with pitcher on her head, 
And clean white apron on her gown of red, — 
Her even-song of love is but half-said : 



Lying in the Grass. 19 

Slie waits the youngest mower. Now he goes ; 
Her cheeks are redder than a wild blush-rose 
They climb up where the deepest shadows close. 

But though they pass, and vanish, I am there. 
I watch his rough hands meet beneath her hair, 
Their broken speech sounds sweet to me like prayer. 

Ah ! now the rosy children come to play, 

And romp and struggle with the new mown hay ; 

Their clear high voices sound from far away. 

They know so little why the world is sad, 

They dig themselves warm graves and yet are glad ; 

Their muffled screams and laughter make me mad ! 

I long to go and play among them there ; 
Unseen, like wind, to take them by the hair, 
And gently make their rosy cheeks more fair. 



20 Lyin^ in the Giass. 

The happy children ! full of frank surprise, 
And sudden whims and innocent ecstasies ; 
What godhead sparkles from their liquid eyes ! 

No wonder round those urns of mingled clays 
That Tuscan potters fashioned in old days, 
And colored like the torrid earth ablaze. 

We find the little gods and loves portrayed, 
Through ancient forests wandering undismayed, 
And fluting hymns of pleasure unafraid. 

They knew, as I do now, what keen delight, 
A strong man feels to watch the tender flight 
Of little children playing in his sight ; 

I do not hunger for a well-stored mind, 
I only wish to live my life, and find 
My heart in unison with all mankind. 



Lying in the Grass. 21 

My life is like the single dewy star 
That trembles on the horizon's primrose-bar, — 
A microcosm where all things living are. 

And if, among the noiseless grasses. Death 
Should come behind and take away my breath, 
I should not rise as one who sorroweth ; 

For I should pass, but all the world would be 

Full of desire and young delight and glee, 

And why should men be sad through loss of me ? 

The light is flying ; in the silver-blue 

The young moon shines from her bright window 

through : 
The mowers are all gone, and I go too. 



THE DEATH OF ARNKEL. 

Across the roaring board in Helgafell, 
Above the clash of ringing horns of ale, 
The guests of Snorri, reddened with the frost, 
Weighed all their comrades through a winter night, 
Disputing which was first in thew and brain 
And courteous acts of manhood ; some averred 
Their host, the shifty Snorri, first of men, 
While some were bent to Arnkel, some to Styrr. 
Then Thorleif Kimbi shouted down the hall, 
*' Folly and windy talk ! the stalwart limbs 
Of Styrr, and that sharp goodly face of thine. 
All-cunning Snorri, make one man, not twain, — 
One man in friendship and in rede, not twain, — 
Nor that man worthy to be named for skill, 



The Death of Arnkcl. 23 

Or strength, or beauty, or for popular arts, 
With Arnkel, son of Tliorolf the grim ghost. 
Wit has he, though not lacking therewithal 
In sinew ; see to it, comrades, lest he crush 
The savage leaders of our oligarchy, 
Vast, indolent, mere iron masks of men, 
Unfit for civic uses ; his the hand 
To gather all our forces like the reins 
Of patient steeds, and drive us at his will, 
Unless we stir betimes, and are his bane." 

So from his turbulent mouth the shaft struck home, 
Venomed with envy and the jealous pride 
Of birth ; and ere they roared themselves to rest. 
The chieftains vowed that Arnkel must be slain. 
Nor waited many days ; for one clear night 
Freystein, the spy, as near his sheep he watched 
Saw Arnkel fetching hay from Orlygstad, 



24 The D cat It of Arnkel. 

With three young thralls of his own household folk. 

And left the fold, and crept across the fell, 

And wakened from their first sweet midnight sleep 

The sons of Thorbrand, and went on, and roused 

Snorri, who dreamed of blood and dear revenge. 

Then through the frosty moonlit night they sped. 

Warmed to the heart with hopes of muderous play, 

Nine men from Snorri's house ; and by the sea 

At Alptafjord they met the six men armed 

With Thorlief ; scarcely greeted they, but skimmed 

Along the black shore of the flashing fjord, 

Lit by the large moon in a cloudless sky ; 

Over the swelling, waving ice they flew, 

Grinding the tufts of grass beneath their sleighs, 

So silent, that the twigs of juniper 

Snapped under them, sharp, like a cracking whip, 

Echoing, and so to Orlygstad they came. 



The Death of Anikel. 25 

But Arnkel saw them through the cold bright air, 
And turned, and bade the three young thralls haste 

home. 
To bring back others of their kith to fight ; 
So, maddened by base fear, they rushed, and one 
Or ever he neared the homestead, as he fled, 
Slipped on the forehead of a mountain force, 
And volleying down from icy plane to plane, 
Woke all the echoes of that waterfall, 
And died, while numb with fright the others ran. 

But Arnkel bowed, and loosened from his sleigh 

The iron runner with its shining point, 

And leaped upon the fence, and set his back 

Against the hay-stack ; through the frosty night 

Its warm deep odor passed into his brain. 

But Snorri and his fellows with no word 

Sprang from their sleighs, and met below the fence. 



26 The Death of Arnkel. 

And reaching upwards with their brawny arms, 
Smote hard at Arnkel. With the runner he, 
Cleaving with both hands, parried blow on blow, 
Till, shaft by shaft, their spears splintered and snapt; 
Nor would they yet have reached him, but that he, 
Gathering a mighty stroke at Thorleif's head, 
Dashed down his runner on the icy fence 
And shivered it, while backwards Thorleif fell, 
Bending the slimness of his supple loins, 
Unwounded. Then a moment's space they stood 
Silent. Then from the haystack at his back 
His glittering sword and buckler Arnkel seized, 
And like a wild-cat clomb the stack, and stood 
Thigh-deep, astride upon the quivering hay. 
Raining down thrusts and blinding all his foes 
With moony lightnings from the flashing steel. 
But Thorleif clambered up behind his back, 
And Snorri, with his shield before his face, 



The Death of Ariikcl. 27 

Harassed him through the wavering veil of hay, 
And Styrr, like some great monster of the fells, 
Swayed his huge broadsword in his knotted fists. 
And swept it, singing, through the helm and brain, 
And deep sank Arnkel on the bloody stack. 

They wrapped his corse in hay, and left him there ; 

To whom within the silence of the night 

Came that dark ghost, his father, whose black face 

Affrights the maidens in the milking-stead ; 

And till afar along the frozen road 

The tinkling of the sleighs he heard, and knew 

That, all too late, the thralls of Arnkel came, 

He hung above the body of his son, 

Casting no shadow in the dazzling moon. 

Cursing the gods with inarticulate voice, 

And cursing that too-envious mood of men 

That brooks no towering excellence, nor heeds 

Virtue, nor welfare of the unsceptred state. 



THE MONAD'S GRAVE. 

The girl who once, on Lydian heights, 
Around the sacred grove of pines, 

Would dance through whole tempestuous nights 
When no moon shines. 

Whose pipe of lotos featly blown 

Gave airs as shrill as Cotys' own. 

Who, crowned with buds of ivy dark, 

Three times drained deep with amorous lips 

The wine-fed bowl of willow-bark, 
With silver tips, 

Nor sank, nor ceased, but shouted still 

Like some wild wind from hill to hill, 



The Monad's Grave. 29 

She lies at last where poplars wave 

Their sad gray foliage all day long, 
The river murmurs near her grave 

A soothing song ; 
Farewell, it saith ! Her days have done 
With shouting at the set of sun. 



A YEAR. 

When the hot Wcasp hung in the grape last year, 
And tendrils withered and leaves grew sere, 
There was little to hope and nothing to fear. 
And the smouldering autumn sank apace, 
And my heart was hollow and cold and drear. 

When the last gray moth that November brings 
Had folded its sallow and sombre wings, 
Like the tuneless voice of a child that sings, 

A music arose in that desolate place, 
A broken music of hopeless things. 

But time went by, with the month of snows, 
And the pulse and tide of that music rose ; 



A Year. 3 1 

As a pain that fades is a pleasure that grows, 

So hope sprang up with a heart of grace, 
And love as a crocus-bud that blows. 

And now I knovy when next autumn has dried 
The sweet hot juice to the grape-skin's side, 
And the new wasps dart where the old ones died. 
My heart will have rest in one luminous face, 
And its longing and yearning be satisfied. 



THE SONS OF CYDIPPE. 

By sacred Argos Polycleitus carved, 
In Indian ivory and Persian gold, 
To Hera, mother of all, dreadful, benign, 
A glorious statue in his darkened house. 

Straight from her throat ran the pure folds, and fell 

In seemly curves about her unseen feet : 

The fillets of her lifted head were bound 

With broidered stories of the Fates and Hours ; 

Scepter and ripe pomegranate, as was meet, 

Her queenly hands sustained, and by her side 

The rustling peacock spread his gorgeous train. 



The Sons of Cydippe. 33 

For ancient Chrysis, from her wrinkled hands 
Letting the torch down fall in obscure sleep, 
Careless, not breathed on by the serious gods, 
Had touched the old Herteum with white flame, 
And like a dream the fabric, full of prayers, 
Vows of forgotten athletes, maidens' gifts, 
Robes of dead priests, echoes of hymns and odes, 
Had glared against the noonday, and was not. 

So, nigher to Canathus, on lower ground. 

Nearer the bright sea, myriad-islanded, 

Argos had built her outraged deity 

A nobler fane among those holy trees — 

Platans and elms — that drank her virgin spring ; 

And all was done, and on this certain day. 

From the dark house,shrouded and swathed in cloths. 

The dread majestic goddess passed in state 

To be unveiled within her own abode. 



34 The Sons of Cydippe. 

Then while the people, clustered in the sun, 

Shouted and pressed, and babes were held aloft, 

At one shrill summons of the sacred flute, 

In all her gold-and-white magnificence, 

The austere god smiled on her worshipers. 

Who suddenly fell silent in their awe. 

Then came a shout, and from the woodland road. 

Craving a passage through the whispering throng. 

Two youths appeared, under a shameful yoke. 

Flushed with the sun, and soiled with dust, and 

bowed, 
Who dragged a chariot with laborious arms. 
Bleeding and chafed ; and on the chariot sate — 
With a thin bay-leaf in her aged hair — 
A matron with uplifted eyes elate. 

Then while all wondered, and the young men sank, 
Breathless and glad, before the glorious god, 



The Sons of Cydippe. 35 

The high-priest lifted up his voice, and said : 
" Blessed art thou, Cydippe, blessed be 
Thy sons who shamed themselves to bring thee here ! 
Oh, not in vain for Biton, not in vain 
For Cleobis, the unfruitful toil, the sweat, 
The groaning axles, and the grinding yoke ! 
Unoiled their limbs, unfilleted their hair, 
Unbathed their feet, hateful to maids and harsh, 
But to the gods sweeter than amber drops' 
That gush from fattest olives of the press, 
Fairer than leaves of their own bay, more fresh 
Than rosy coldness of young skin, their stains, 
Since like a sacrifice of nard and myrrh 
Their filial virtue sanctifies the winds." 

Then slowly old Cydippe rose and cried : 
" Hera, whose priestess I have been and am, 
Virgin and matron, at whose angry eyes 



36 The Sojis of Cydippe. 

Zeus trembles, and the windless plain of heaven 
With hyperborean echoes rings and roars, 
Remembering thy dread nuptials, a wise god, 
Golden and white in thy new-carven shape. 
Hear me ! and grant for these my pious sons, 
Who saw my tears, and wound their tender arms 
Around me, and kissed me calm, and since no steer 
Staid in the byre, dragged out the chariot old, 
And wore themselves the galling yoke, and brought 
Their mother to the feast of her desire, 
Grant them, O Hera, thy best gift of g.ifts !" 
Whereat the statue from its jeweled eyes 
Lightened, and thunder ran from cloud to cloud 
In heaven, and the vast company was hushed. 
But when they sought for Cleobis, behold 
He lay there still, and by his brother's side 
T^ay Biton, smiling through ambrosial curls, 
And when the people touched them they were dead. 



THE ALMOND TREE. 

Pure soul, who in God's high-walled Paradise 
Dost walk in all the whiteness of new birth, 
And hear'st the angels' shrill antiphonies. 

Which are to heaven what time is to the earth. 

Give ear to one to whom in days of old 
Thou gavest tears for sorrow, smiles for mirth. 
And all the passion one poor heart could hold ! 

Behold, O Love ! to-day how hushed and still 

My heart is, and my lips and hands are calm ; 
When last I strove to win you to my will, 
The angels drowned my pleading in a psalm ; 

But now, sweet heart, there is no fear of this, 
For I am quiet ; therefore let the balm 
Of thy light breath be on me in a kiss ! 



38 The Almond Tree. 

Alas ! I dream again ! All this is o'er ! 

. . . See, I look down into our garden-close, 
From your old casement-sill where once you wore 
The ivy for a garland on your brows ; 

There is no amaranth, no pomegranate here, 
But can your heart forget the Christmas-rose, 
The crocuses and snowdrops once so dear ? 

But these, like our old love, are all gone by, 
And now the violets round the apple-roots 
Glimmer, and jonquils in the deep grass lie, 
And fruit-trees thicken into pale green shoots ; 

Thy garth, that put on mourning for thy death, 
Is comforted, and to the sound of lutes 
Dances with Spring, a minstrel of bright breath. 

But I am not yet comforted, O Love ! 

Does not the auriole blind thy gentle eyes ? 
That crimson robe of thine the virgins wove 



The Almond Tree. 39 

Trammels thy footsteps with its draperies, 

Else thou would'st see, would'st come to me, if 
even 
The Cherubim withstood with trumpet-cHes, 
And barred with steel the jewelled gates of 
heaven ! 

In vain, in vain ! Lo ! on this first spring-morn, 

For all my words, my heart is nearer rest, 
And though my life, through loss of thee, is worn 
To saddest memory by a brief dream blest, 
I would not mar one moment of thy bliss 
To clasp again thy bright and heaving breast, 
Or fade into the fragrance of thy kiss. 

Yet would an hour on earth with me be pain ? 

A greater boon than this of old was won 
By her, who through the fair Sicilian plain 

Sought her lost daughter, the delicious one. 



40 The Almond Tree. 

With tears and rending of the flowery hair, 
And sang so deftly underneath the sun, 

That Hell was well-nigh vanquished by her 
prayer. 

Hail, golden ray of God's most blessed light ! 

Hail, sunbeam, breaking from the faint March sky ! 
What rosy vision melts upon my sight ? 
What glory opens where the flashes die ? 

Surely she comes to me on earth, and stands 
Among the flowerless lingering trees that sigh 
Around her, and she stretches forth her hands. 

Her hands she stretcheth forth, but speaketh not, 
And all the bloom and effluence round her rise 

That crown her heavenly saintship with no spot, 
Herself the fairest flower in Paradise ; 

Draw near and speak to me, O Love, in grace, 



The Almond Tree. 41 

And let me drink the beauty of thine eyes. 
And learn of God by gazing in thy face. 

Tempt not my passion with such lingering feet, 
My trembling throat and strained white lips are 
numb ; 
Through black twined boughs I see thy body, sweet ! 
Robed in rose-white, thou standest calm and dumb! 

Oh heart of my desire, no more delay, 
Yet nearer in thy cloudy glory come, 
Yet nearer, or in glory fade away ! 

Fade then, sweet vision ! fail, Oh perfect dream ! 

There is no need of words of human speech, 
And the blind ecstasy of thought I deem 
A loftier joy than mortal sense can reach ; 

No more, ye flowers of Spring, shall my dull 
song 



42 The Almond Tree. 

Be heavy in your ears, but, each to each, 
My love and I hold converse and be strong. 

The mystic splendor pines away, and leaves 

Its fainter shadow in the almond-tree, 
Whose cloud of bloom-white blossom earliest cleaves 
The waste wan void of earth's sterility ; 

Before the troop of lyric Dryades 
Veiled, blushing as a bride, it comes, and see ! 
Spring leaps to kiss it, glowing in the breeze. 

While life shall bring with each revolving year • 

Its winter-woes and icy mystery, 
This fair remembrance of the sun shall bring 
My thoughts of Love re-risen in memory ; 

Old hopes shall blossom with the west wind's 
breath 
And for Her sake the almond-bloom shall be 
The white fringe on the velvet pall of death. 



ON DARTMOOR. 



I. 



Warm tissue of refulgent vapor fills 

The valley southward to the hurrying stream, 
Whose withered and sun-wasted waters gleam 

Meandering downwards through the terraced hills ; 

Here, even here, the hand of man fulfils 
Its daily toil, for though alone I seem 
I hear the clangor of a far-off team, 

And men that shout above the shouting rills ; 

Nor jars this noise of labor on mine ear. 

Nor seem, because of these, the spirits less near 
That animate the mountains and the skies. 



44 On Dartmoor. 

The self-same heart of nature shineth clear 
Through filmy garments of a golden sphere 
And earnest looks of humble human eyes. 



II. 



A soft gray line of haze subdues the west 

That was so rosy half-an-hour ago ; 

The moaning night-breeze just begins to blow. 

And now the team that ploughed the mountain's 
breast 

Cease their long toil, and dream of home and rest ; 
Now, giant-like, the tall young ploughmen go 
Between me and the sunset, footing slow ; 

My spirit, as an uninvited guest. 

Goes with them, wondering what desire, what aim, 

May stir their hearts and mine with common flame, 
Or, thoughtless, do their hands suffice their soul ? 



0)1 Dartmoor. 45 

I know not^care not, for I deem no shame 
To hold men, flowers, and trees and stars the same, 
Myself, as these, one atom in the whole. 



THE TOMB OF SOPHOCLES. 

A bounding satyr, golden in the beard, 
That leaps with goat-feet high into the air, 
And crushes from the thyme an odor rare, 

Keeps watch around the marble tomb revered 

Of Sophocles, the poet loved and feared. 

Whose Mighty voice once called out of her lair 
The Dorian muse severe, with braided hair, 

Who loved the thyrsus and wild dances weird. 

Here all day long the pious bees can pour 
Libations of their honey ; round this tomb 
The Dionysiac ivy loves to roam ; 

The satyr laughs ; but He awakes no more, 

Wrapped up in silence at the grave's cold core, 
Nor sees the sun wheel round in the white dome. 



FEBRUARY IN ROME. 

When Romah fields are red with cyclamen, 
And in the palace-gardens you may find, 
Under great leaves and sheltering briony-bind, 

Clusters of cream-white violets, O then 

The ruined city of immortal men 

Must smile, a little to her fate resigned ; 

And through her corridors the slow warm wind 

Gush harmonies beyond a mortal ken. 

Such soft favonian airs upon a flute, 

Such shadowy censers burning live perfume. 
Shall lead the mystic city to her tomb ; 

Nor flowerless springs, nor autumns without fruit, 

Nor summer-mornings when the winds are mule, 
Trouble her soul till Rome be no more Rome. 



GREECE AND ENGLAND. 

Would this sunshine be completer, 
Or these violets smell sweeter, 
Or the birds sing more in metre, 
If it all were years ago, 
When the melted mountain-snow 
Heard in Enna all the woe 
Of the poor forlorn Demeter ? 

Would a stronger life pulse o'er us 
If a panther-chariot bore us. 
If we saw, enthroned before us, 
Ride the leopard-footed god, 
With a fir-cone tip the rod, 



Greece and England. 49 

Whirl the thyrsus round, and nod 
To a drunken Mtenad-chorus ? 

Bloomed there richer, redder roses 
Where the Lesbian earth encloses 
All of Sappho ? where reposes 

Meleager, laid to sleep 

By the olive-girdled deep ; 

Where the Syrian maidens weep, 
Bringing serpolet in posies ? 

Ah ! it may be ! Greece had leisure 
For a world of faded pleasure ; 
We must tread a tamer measure, 

To a milder, homelier lyre ; 

We must tend a paler fire. 

Lay less perfume on the pyre, 
Be content with poorer treasure ! 



50 Greece and England. 

Were the brown-limbed lovers bolder ; 

Venus younger, Cupid older ? 

Down the wood-nymph's warm white shoulder 

Trailed a purpler, madder vine ? 

Were the poets more divine ? 

Brew we no such golden wine 
Here, where summer suns are colder ? 

Yet for us too life has flowers, 

Time a glass of joyous hours, 

Interchange of sun and showers, 
And a wealth of leafy glades, 
Meant for loving men and maids, 
Full of warm green lights and shades, 

Trellis-work of wild-wood bowers. 

So while English suns are keeping 
Count of sowing-time and reaping, 



Greece and Englana. 51 

We've no need to waste our weeping, 

Though the glad Greeks lounged at ease 

Underneath their olive-trees, 

And the Sophoclean bees 
Swarmed on lips of poets sleeping ! 



THE BURDEN OF DELIGHT. 

Remember how the winter through, 

While all the ways were choked with mire, 
Half-maddened with the rain, we two 
Have nestled closer round the fire ; 
And talked of all that should be done 
When April brought us back the sun, 
What gardens white with butterflies. 

What soft green nooks of budded heather, 
What moorlands open to the skies 
We two would scour together ! 

And now the month comes round again ! 

Cool interchange of genial hours, 
Soft gleams of sunlight, streams of rain, 



The Burden of Delight. 53 

Have starred the meadow-lands with flowers, 
And in the orchards on the hills 
The grass is gold with daffodils, 
And we have wandered hand in hand, 

Where sea below and sky above ^ 

Seem narrowing to a strip of land 
The pathway that we love 

Our path looks out on the wide sea 
And knows not of the land ; we sit 

For hours in silent reverie 

To watch the sea and pulse with it ; 

Its deep monotonous refrain 

Brings melancholy, almost pain ; 

We scarcely wish to speak or move, 
But just to feel each other there, 

And sense of presence is like love. 
And silence more than prayer. 



54 The Burden of Dclii^JU. 

Sharp round the steep hill's utmost line 

It winds, and, just below, the grass 
Sinks with tumultuous incline 

To where the rock-pools shine like glass ; 
The tufts of thrift can drink their fill 
Of sea-wind on this rugged hill, 
And all the herbage, tossed and blown, 

Is stained with salt and crushed with wind, 
Save where, behind some boulder stone, 
A harbor flowers may find. 

The bright sea sparkles, sunbeam-kissed, 
And o'er its face such breezes float 

As lightly turn to amethyst 

The pearl-gray of a ring-dove's throat ; 

Thus stirred and ruffled, shines anew 

The radiant plain of changing hue, 

So gentle that the eye divines 



The Burden of Delight. 55 

No reason why the foam should fall 
So loudly, in such serried lines, 
Against the dark rock- wall. 

The wind is low now ; even here 
Where all the breezes congregate, 

The softest warbler need not fear 
To linger with its downy mate ; 

And here where you have longed to be, 

So many weeks and months, with me. 

Sit silently or softly speak 

Or sing some air of pensive mood. 

Not loud enough to mar or break 
This delicate solitude. 

Are we not happy ? Sunlit air, 

Soft color, floods of dewy light, 
A flowery perfume everywhere, 



56 The Burden of Delight. 

Pour out their wealth for our delight ; 
Through dreary hours of snow and sleet, 
The hope of these winged winter's feet, 
We have them now ; the very breath 

Of nature seems an altar-fire 
That wakes the bright world's heart from death 
To satiate our desire. 

Sing to me, therefore, sing or speak • 
Wake my dull heart to happiness, 

Perchance my pulses are too weak 
To stir with all this sweet excess ; 

Perhaps the sudden spring has come 

Too soon, and found my spirit dumb ; 

Howe'er it be, my heart is cold, 
No echo stirs within my brain, 

To me, too suddenly grown old, 
This beauty speaks in vain. 



llie Burden of D dig Jit. 57 

Why are you silent ? Lo ! to-day 

It is not as it once hath been ; 
I can not sit the old sweet way, 

Absorbed, contented and serene ; 
I cannot feel my heart rejoice, 
I crave the comfort of your voice ; 
Speak ! speak, remind me of the past, 

Let my spent embers at your fire 
Revive and kindle, till at last 
Delight surpass desire. 

Still are you silent, only press 

My hand, and turn your face away ? 

You wince, too, from the fierce caress 
That April flings on us to-day ? 

O human heart, too weak to bear 

The whole fulfilment of a prayer ! 

This sudden summer strikes us dumb, 



58 The Burden of Delight. 

The wild hope realized but scares, 
The substances of dreams become 
A burden unawares. 

How can we sit here and not thrill 
With but the pleasure of past time ? 

This pathway winding round the hill 
Should stir us like enchanted rhyme ! 

Nay ! for the dull and sluggish brain 

Is spurred to action all in vain ! 

And when the spirit cannot rise 
Through natural feeling into light, 

No perfumed air, no splendid skies 
Can lend it wings for flight. 

Come then and leave the glittering sea 

To sparkle in the laughing air, 
Another day its face will be 



The B ID' den of Delight. 59 

No less refulgent, no less fair, 
And we by custom be made strong, 
To bear what we desired so long ; 
To-day the slackening nerves demand 

A milder light, a sadder air, 

Some corner of forgotten land 

Still winter-like and bare. 

Come, leave our foot-path for to-day, 
And, turning inland, seek the woods 

Where last year's sombre leaves decay 
In brown sonorous solitudes ; 

The murmurous voice of those dark trees 

Shall teach us more than sun or seas, 

And in that twilight we may find 

Some golden flower of strange perfume, 

A blossom hidden from the wind, 
A flame within the tomb. 



THE MANDRAKES. 

A Study in Grotesque. 

" Pyorex. And whither must these flies be sent ? 

Oberon. To everlasting banishment. 
The woods are yew trees, bent and broke 
By whirlwinds ; here and there an oak 
Half cleft with thunder. To this grove 
We banish them. 

Culprits. Some mercy, Jove ! 

Oberon. Vou should have cried so in your youth. 
When Chronos and his daughter Truth 
Sojourned among you : when you spent 
Whole years in riotous merriment." 

Day's '■'■ Parliament of Bees,'''' 1607. 

Whether in meditation or in dream, 

Or whether m the circle of known lands 

I walked, I cannot tell ; the crested stream 
Of the great waters breaking on the sands, 



The Mandrakes. 6i 

The far brown moors, the gulls in white-winged 
bands, 
Seem too clear-colored on my memory 
To be the ghosts of any phantasy. 

Along the sweep of an untrodden bay, 

Towards a great headland that before me rose, 

Full merrily I held my sunny way ; 

And in that atmosphere of gold and snows. 
And pure blue fire of air and sea, the woes 

Of mortals and their pitiful despair 

Seemed vague to my glad spirit void of care. 

The long bluff rose against the sea, and thrust 
Its storm-proof bosom far into the deep. 

And many a breaker, many a roaring gust 
Disturbed the calm of its primeval sleep. 
Through the gray winter twilight ; there did creep 



62 The Mandrakes. 

In swarthy trefoil, or salt-blighted grass, 

A token where the uncurbed sea-wind did pass. 

So even in the bright and pure June air 
The place seemed vestured in unholy guise 

The loneliness was like a pain to bear, 

I sought about with strangely troubled eyes 
For bird or flower to glad me in some-wise, 

In vain ; then at the utmost verge I stayed 

When far beneath the refluent thunders swayed. 

Then as I stood upon the precipice 

Drinking the sunlight and sharp air like wine, 

I heard, or thought I heard, a murmur twice, — 
First, like a far-off shrieking, clear and fine, 
Then like an anxious shouting for a sign 

To careless boatman steering o'er the rim 

Of rocks, — but both behind me, and both dim, 



The Mandrakes. ()t^ 

But even while, not turning, in my mind 

I thought how very lonely the place was, — 
The rushing of the steadfast wings of wind 

Being empty of all common sounds that pass, — 
The song of birds, or sighing in the grass, — 
Then suddenly a howl to rend the skies 
From the bare land behind me seemed to rise. 

And while my skin was wrinkled with affright, 

I noticed far and far away, an isle, 
With faintest waves of jagged pale blue light 

Skirt the horizon, land not seen erewhile ; — 
This in a flash of thought ; such sights beguile 
Our heart in wildest moments, and we know 
Not clearly after how it could be so. 

But in a second, ere the long shriek died, 

I turned to see whence came this note of woe, 



64 The Mandrakes. 

And marked on the down's topmost hollow wide 
One lonely scrawling gnarled tree that did grow, 
Coiling its leafless branches stunt and low, 

Midmost the promontory ; thither I 

Drawn by some hate-spell felt my way did lie. 

It was a shameful tree, the twisted pain 
Of its sad boughs and sterile hollow stem, 

Took fearful forms of things that are man's bane, 
And circling drops of oozings did begem 
Its twigs with a dull poisonous anadem ; 

It had no bright young leaves to tell of Spring, 

Nor clustering moss that hallowed eld doth bring. 

And at its foot were forms that had no shape 
Unmoving creatures twisted like the tree, 

With horrid wooden faces set agape 
And bodies buried in the earth ; to see 
Such human features moulded terribly 



The Mandrakes. 65 

Sent all the life-blood surging to my heart, 
And mine own breath was ready to depart. 

When one most awful visage bent the roots 

That were its jaws, and moaning, slowly spake ; 

" O mortal, what assemblage of soft lutes 

Rings now across the silvery waves that break 
Along the city, where the shadows make 

In tremulous calm lines of sunset fire 

A magic image of each dome and spire ? " 

He questioned thus in strained voluptuous tones ; 

His hideous feet deep in the ground were set ; 
His body fashioned without skin or bones 

Was like the mystic figure of smooth jet 

Egyptian priests wore in an amulet, 
What time they mourned Osiris ; like a shriek 
His pained voice ended sharply, forced and weak. 



66 The Mandrakes. 

Then when I answered nothing, once again 

He spoke, — " In what elysiuni of the blest, 
Lapped in sweet airs, forgetful of all pain, 

Fulfilling an eternity of rest, 

Lies Titian, of all painters loved the best ? 
Oh ! say, in any land where you have been. 
Heard you of him and not of Aretin ? " 

" O matchless painter of the noble heart ! 

Dear friend I loved long centuries ago ! 
Lean from that golden chamber where thou art, 

Above the sun and moon, and lighten so 

The utter, endless agony of woe 
That fills my wretched being, doomed for aye 
Rooted in this foul living grave to stay. 

" Ah, mortal, listen ! I was once a child 

Into whose brain God poured the mystic wine, 



The Mandrakes. 67 

Full of pure odors, fragrance undefiled, — 

Keen drink to make a poet all divine. 

I took the gift ; men called me Aretine : 
All that was pure and poet-like I spurned, 
And to hell-fire for inspiration turned. 

" God suffered long with me, and let the fire 
Of passionate youth burn to the ash of age, 

Saying to the angels, ' Surely when desire 
Is dead within him, his true heritage 
Will seem more precious to him, and the page 

Of the great book shall in the end record 

Some prayer, some love, some tender-spoken word.' 

" Yet I, still impious, burned before my God 

The rancid oil of hypocritic prayer, 
And with unsanctified, rash footsteps trod 

Those shadowy precincts, where the misty air 



68 The Mandrakes. 

Is heavy with the sound of hymns, and rare 
High spirit-breathings fill the solemn place 
Where God meets man, in silence, face to face." 

I stood beneath the tree now, all the ground 
Was full of these grim shadows of mankind, 

And all in some way shamefully were bound 
Into the earth, but no two could I find 
In which the same quaint shapes were intertwined ; 

But each was human, yet each had the feature 

Of some mis-shapen thing or hideous creature. 

Oh, how the calm around us, and the light 
Of pure cerulean gether, full of sun, 

Made awful contrast with the shameful blight 
Of these foul natures ! Him I looked upon 
Was like an old man, utterly undone. 

With white thin locks, that blew about his eyes 

Like grasses round a stump when summer dies. 



The Mandrakes. 69 

Fear held my tongue ; I trembled like the leaves 
That quiver when the gradual autumn falls 

On shadowy Vallombrosa, and bereaves 
The forest, full of flowery funerals, — 
And all the windy places have their palls 

Of yellow leafage, till the noiseless snow 

Muffles the rustling of this gusty woe. 

At last I murmured, " Cannot rest or death 
Forever visit this pale place of tombs ? " 

And ceased ; for, like the sound of a sharp breath 
That from the drawn throat of one dying comes. 
Whose heart the Master of all breath benumbs. 

An answering voice arose, whose calm, intense. 

Sad music won my ear with sharp suspense : 

" Not vervain, gathered when the dog-star rose, 
Not agrimony, euphrasy, or rue, 



70 The Mandrakes. 

Not any herb can bring our pain repose, 

Nor any poison make our summers few ; 

For ever our own agonies renew 
Our wasted bodies still to suffer pain, 
To suffer, pine, renew, and pine again. 

"Ah, turn away ! behold me not ! those eyes 
Burn me like lightning with a searing shame ; 

Gaze not upon these ghastly infamies. 

That must deform me worse than maimed or lame, 
The ribald children scoff at for their game ; 

Ah ! in what jocund wise I danced and sung 

Through the warm Tuscan nights, when life was 
young. 

" These gray and shrunken fingers once were lithe 

And meet for all most dainty handiwork ; 
Whether a painted coffer for a blithe 



The Mandrakes. 71 

Fair bride, or for the Caliph or Grand Turk 
A golden chalice, where red wine might lurk 
Coiled unforbidden ; or for monks' dim eyes, — 
Worked in distemper, — hell and paradise. 

J' Ay me ! what lovely fancies I have wrought 
In cloisters, or along a church's wall, 

Where in a high-fenced garden angels taught 
Our Lady at her baby's feet to fall ; 
There, with his keys, went Peter; there stood Paul 

With long brown beard, and leant upon his sword ; 

And all the virgins, singing, praised the Lord. 

" But, best of all, I loved to stand and paint 
His face who doubted when the Lord arose, — 

Andrew, my ever-blessed patron saint, 

Bearing his mighty cross, and worn with woes, 
And pining sore from self-inflicted blows, — 



72 The Mandrakes. 

His passionate, jealous, loving, hating heart, 
Seemed every-way my very counterpart. 

" He is in glory now, and walks and sings [theirs, 
With saints who take his rough brown hand in 

And sees the angels' silver-spotted wings ! 

But I convulse the noon-day with my prayers, 
And in the night-time blast the icy airs 

With my shrill pains ; hearken for what offence 

My soul was doomed to anguish so intense ! 

" If one man's art can be another's bane, — 
If half the swiftest runners miss the goal, — 

If thinkers weave out holy thoughts in vain. 

Which bless the world and ruin their own soul, — 
If bitterness and languor be our dole, — 

Why do we seek, so greedily, at all 

Laurel, to poison our own brows withal ? 



The Alandrakcs. 73 

" All this is only vanity ; but, lo ! 

For weary years I slowly fought my way 

High up the hill of fame, and should I go 
Right sadly down again at fall of day, 
Because this Domenic, this popinjay, 

Could trick a wall out with a newer brush, 

And after him all men began to rush ? 

" When I grew poor, and no man came to me, 
One night I lay awake, and by my bed 

Heard a low, subtle voice, and seemed to see 
A little demon, with a fiery head. 
That whispered, ' If now Domenic were dead. 

And his new w^ay dead with him, ha ! ha ! ha ! 

Luck would come back again to Andrea ! ' 

" So one bright night when singing he went by 
I watched him ; round his neck a chain of gold 



74 The Mandrakes. 

Glittered and lured me like a serpent's eye ; 
It was the price of some new picture sold : 
My nerves grew steel, my veins of fire throbbed 
cold, 
My dagger smote him through the neck, charm- 
bound, 
And like a snake, the chain slid to the ground. 

" Ay me ! ay me ! what cruel, cruel, pang 
Draws forth this tale of mine own infamy ; 

Oh ! youth, by all the angel choirs that sang, 
Round holy Christ at his nativity, 
I pray thee mock me not, in charity, 

Who for one hour of passion and fell spite 

Must suffer endless torture infinite." 

> 

Then at my side a voice cried, " Look on me ! 
Stamp on me, crush me, grind me with your heel ! 



The Mandrakes. 75 

I, even I, this shapeless thing am he 

That slandered Sappho ! Set on me the seal 

Of your undying hatred, let me feel, 
Even though I burn with anguish, that men know 
Her holy life was ever pure as snow." 

Then flattened out, I saw upon the ground 

What seemed the hide of some mis-shapen beast. 

With a pinned cord to bind it twisted round ; 
But lo ! its heart in beating never ceased, 
And now the flutter of its breath increased, 

Barring its body of unhealthy hue 

With lurid waves of mingling green and blue. 

" Of old," a stifled voice proclaimed, " I dwelt 

Deep in the cedar-shades of that high hill. 
Whose brow looks down on Lesbos, and the belt 



76 The Mandrakes. 

Of sun-lit sea, where rippling laughters fill 
The spaces down to Chios; thither still 

As gold above the Lydian mountains shone 

Sappho would climb to dream and muse alone. 

• - 

'* How oft her wind-swept hair and kindling eyes 
I watched, unseen, within my own rose-bowers, 

Her cheek that glowed at her heart's phantasies. 
Bright as the refluent flush of fields of flowers 
Stirred by the light feet of the flying hours, 

When, about sunrise, on a morn of May, 

Westward they troop, and herald the young day ! 

" So fair was she in my conceit ; but soon 

Her songs were sung from Lesbian town to town. 

And other islands claimed the lyric boon, 

And Andros praised, and Paros sent a crown, 



The Mandrakes. 77 

And reverend men, in philosophic gown, 
From Greece, from sage Ionia, came to lay 
At Sappho's feet the homage of a day. 

" Then in my heart the love I bore her grew 
To foulest envy, like the bitter core 

That lies in the sweet berry of the yew ; 
For I, too, fashioned for the lute, and bore 
Such ivy-wreaths as would-be poets wore ; 

But never ode of mine did men repeat, 

Singing for glee along the broad white street. 

" It happed that through the islands I must go 
To gather tribute, and where'er I came 

The youths and girls would gather round to know 
What news of Sappho, till my heart became 
Shrivelled and parched with spite as with a flame, 



78 The Mandrakes. 

And evermore I set my subtle tongue 

To hint and whisper nameless tales of wrong. 



" And soon all lands rang out with that ill-fame, 
For little souls delight to think the worst 

Of sovereign spirits who have won great name 
For virtue or for wit, so all men nursed 
And spread the rumor of these tales accursed, 

Which smouldered, far from Lesbos, till she died 

Then burst in lurid flames unsanctified. 



" So to this limbo my unholy spirit 

Was dragged by demons when my pulses sank, 
And here forever shall my flesh inherit 

More pain than ever human body drank. 

See this bruised head, this haggard arm and shank, 



The Mandrakes. 79 

The slow contracting pain of centuries 
Has drawn the bones into this hideous guise." 



Then silence came, save far away the sound 
Of waves that rang like timbrels in the air, 

Dashing and dying on the shore, steel-bound ; 
I stood above those lurid shapes in prayer, 
Desiring that, if any hope there Avere, 

Quickly their souls and bodies might decay, 

And to the sovereign waters fade away. 



For to my thought the moaning, sighing sea 
Seemed yearning to receive them to its breast, 

And fain would let its huge embraces be 
Their haven of forgetfulness and rest : — 
" O let them die !" I murmured ; " It is best ! 



8o The Mandrakes. 

Have they not fed on anguish all their years ? 

And drenched the morsel in the wine of tears ? 



" Their pains are greater than the Titan's were, 
Hung, a god-man, a sign to man and God, 

For his immortal spirit was aware 
Of its own immortality, and trod 
With head erect beneath the oppressor's rod. 

But these are bitten through with their own shame; 

And scorch t with infamy as with a flame. 



"Wherefore, if Heaven forbid not, let them die !" 
The echo of my accents broke in moans 

From all the grim and stark fraternity 

That lay in heaps about my feet like stones ; 
Down to the caverns of my heart their groans 



The Mandrakes. 8i 

Sank, as a meteor, breeding death and woe, 
Slants down the skies on weeping lands below. 

Then all the silence grew a mighty sound, 
Gathering in voice along the nether sea, 

As when in some Norwegian gulf profound 
Sailors, becalmed along the monstrous lee 
Of desolate Torghatten, hear the glee 

Of many a riotous and rebel wind. 

Deep in the mountain's riven heart confined. 

With murmuring of immortal wings it came 
Blown by no wind, and moaned along the deep. 

Then hung at last above that place of shame 

On plumes of sound, like some great bird asleep, — 
Though o'er the blue no cloud nor stain did 
creep, — 



82 The Mandrakes. 

And slowly gave in words articulate 
All the vast utterance of the unseen fate. 



O thou grave mystic, who, by inner light, 

Didst watch the ruddy, throbbing life in flowers, 

And shaken by no pitiful affright, 

Held'st converse with the eternal starry powers ; 
By all the bliss in full ecstatic hours, 

From spirit-tongues, to thee, a spirit, given. 

Bow down and aid me from thy lucent heaven ! 

Blake, loveliest of the sons of shadowy light, 

Throned, with dawn-mist for purple, sun for 
gold,— 

Regent above us in all true men's sight, 
Among thy kindred angel-ranks enrolled, — 
Think not thy latest lover overbold, 



The Mandrakes. 
If in sore need he for a while prolong 
Prayer for thy aid in his most arduous song ! 



For he must murmur what a spirit sang, 

Lisp the weird words no mortal can pronounce ; 

For all about my head the air now rang 

With the dread clarion Voice, that did denounce 
The writhing things, and bid my heart renounce 

Pity and grief, and drown in obloquy 

All hope for these, still dying and to die. 



" No temple, and no tripod, and no shrine 
Is half so sacred as the soul of man, 

Lit with a flame more subtle, more divine, 

Than that which round the glimmering altar ran, 
With mutterings and with thunders, when the clan 



84 The Mandrakes. 

Of Baal-prophets howled, and sank down dead 

On the cold parapet their life-blood fed. 

" Man is himself the lamp for hallowed use, 
The oil that feeds it and the hand that lights, 

Each to his brother is the plenteous cruse, 
And in the universal gift unites ; 
So all combine, with sacrificial rites, 

Throughout the gleaming world, from bound to 
bound. 

To spread the wealth that old Prometheus found. 

" And so should all things slowly climb up higher 

Into the perfectness of utter rest, 
And no least breath of passion stir the fire 

That fell from God and burneth in man's breast ; 

By his own purity should man be blest, 



The Mandrakes. 85 

The soul being priest, and worshipper, and shrine, 
Bearing God's presence for an outward sign. 



*' But ah ! what punishment would not be meet 
To scourge that ribald priest, that should defile 

The lintel of his own God's mercy-seat ; 

Or who, with nimble fingers and smooth wile. 
Should from the prostrate worshippers beguile 

The sacred gifts of balsam or of myrrh. 

To burn in sport where harlot-loves confer ? 



" Would the vexed God be pitiful and meek, 
Nor smite the impious with a thunder-bolt, 

Clothing the lingering life and hollow cheek 
With pain as with a garment ? Let the dolt 
Go whine and whimper over heath and holt, — 



86 The Ma7idrakes. 

Shall any lovers of the God be found 

Whose hearts shall melt with pity at the sound ? 



" Wherefore, if all things sacred, all things pure, 
All that makes life worth living for to men, 

While chastity, and faith, and honor sure, 

Have in your heart their answering echoes then 
Cease to be wise above a mortal ken, 

And judge that we, whose robes are virtues, know 

Where justice rules, and mercy may not go." 



As from the heart's-core of a trumpet-blast 
May rise the melody of whispering flutes, 

A softer music on my ear was cast, 

Even as I lay among those living roots, 

And heard their direful sentence, and the fruits 



The Mandrakes. 87 

Of their insane rebellion ; sweet and far 
As orchard-singing under a pale star, 



That tender fluting rose, but, gathering strength, 
Thrilled like a hundred instruments in tune, 

Here soft citoles, and here in liquid length 

The sobbing of tense harp-strings, and all soon 
Rounded with murmurs of the full bassoon. 

And all words faded, and I rose, and lo ! 

A lady standing on the hill of woe. 



Adown her shoulders, over the broad breast, 
A saffron robe fell lightly to her feet, 

Edged quaintly with meander ; for the rest, 
Her changeful eyes were wonderfully sweet. 
Sea-colored, and her braided hair made meet 



88 The Mandrakes. 

Under a fillet of starred myrtle-flowers, 
More large and pure than any bloom of ours. 



Her face was even as apple-blossom is, 

When first the winds awaken it ; her mouth 

Seemed like the incarnation of a kiss ; 

A philtre for all sorrows ; in heart-drouth 
A fountain breathing of the fragrant south ; 

A cage for songs ; — a violin — who knows ? 

Perchance the rose-tree of the world's great rose ! 



Kalliope, the eternal Muse, she hight, 
Whose lips woke music in Maeonides, 

Through all the alternatives of day and night, 
Silence and song, that this poor wan world sees. 

She walks unchanged, while old divinities 



TJic Mandrakes. 
Wither and die, and new creeds spring and fall, 
And new flowers hear the new-born cuckoos call. 



There in her loveliness she stood and spread 
Her arms out to me in most smiling wise, 

Saying, " Oh, my servant, in such drerihed, 
Why floats thy spirit in a wind of sighs ? 
What ruth and passion gather to thine eyes ? 

What part has thou with these ? Ah ! wayward child, 

Should I be clement to them ? " And she smiled. 



O ! what a smile ? But when she ceased, once more 
I cast my eyes upon the twisted features ; 

And all the pity that my heart once bore 

To watch the writhing of the loathsome creatures 
Fled from me, for their foul degenerate natures 



go The Afandrakes. 

Scowled under those pure eyes of hers, as hell 

Must blacken, seen from heaven's white pinnacle. 

She vanished. Then they howled and howled until 
The cave of air, devoid of other sound, 

Was full of moaning echoes round the hill ; 
Then with my hands my aching ears I bound, 
And rushing from that cruel cursed ground. 

From cleft to cleft leapt downwards to the sea, 

Where faint wave-music was as balm to me. 



EUTHANASIA. 

•When age comes by and lays his frosty hands 
So lightly on mine eyes, that, scarce aware 
Of what an endless weight of gloom they bear, 

I pause, unstirred, and wait for his commands ; 

When time has bound these limbs of mine with bands, 
And hushed mine ears, and silvered all my hair, 
May sorrow come not, nor a vain despair 

Trouble my soul that meekly girded stands. 

As silent rivers into silent lakes, 

Through hush of reeds that not a murmur breaks, 

Wind, mindful of the poppies whence they came, 
So may my life, and calmly burn away. 
As ceases in a lamp at break of day 

The fragrant remnant of memorial flame. 



THE PRAISE OF DIONYSUS. 

Chant Royal. 

Behold, above the mountains there is light, 
A streak of gold, a line of gathering fire. 
And the dim East hath suddenly grown bright 
With pale aerial flame, that drives up higher 
The lurid mists that of the night aware 
Breasted the dark ravines and coverts bare ; 
Behold, behold ! the granite gates unclose, 
And down the vales a lyric people flows. 
Who dance to music, and in dancing fling 
Their frantic robes to every wind that blows, 
And deathless praises to the vine-god sing. 



The Praise of Dionysus. 93 

Nearer they press, and nearer still in sight, 
Still dancing blithely in a seemly choir ; 
Tossing on high the symbol of their rite. 
The cone-tipped thyrsus of a god's desire ; 
Nearer they come, tall damsels flushed and fair, 
With ivy circling their abundant hair. 
Onward, with even pace, in stately rows. 
With eye that flashes, and with cheek that glows 
And all the while their tribute-songs they bring, 
And newer glories of the past disclose. 
And deathless praises to the vine-god sing. 

The pure luxuriance of their limbs is white, 
And flashes clearer as they draw the nigher, 
Bathed in an air of infinite delight. 
Smooth without wound of thorn or fleck of mire, 
Borne up by song as by a trumpet's blare. 
Leading the van to conquest, on they fare ; 



94 The Praise of Dionysus. 

Fearless and bold, whoever comes or goes, 
These shining cohorts of Bacchantes close, 
Shouting and shouting till the mountains ring. 
And forests grim forget their ancient woes, 
And deathless praises to the vine-god sing. 



And youths are there for whom full many a night 
Brought dreams of bliss, vague dreams that haunt 

and tire, 
Who rose in their own ecstasy bedight, 
And wandered forth through many a scourging 

briar, 
And waited shivering in the icy air, 
And wrapped the leopard-skin about them there. 
Knowing, for all the bitter air that froze, 
The time must come, that every poet knows. 
When he shall rise and feel himself a king, 



The Praise of Dionysus. 95 

And follow, follow where the ivy grows, 
And deathless praises to the vine-god sing. 

But oh ! within the heart of this great flight, 
Whose ivory arms hold up the golden lyre ? 
What form is this of more than mortal height ? 
What matchless beauty, what inspired ire ! 
The brindled panthers know the prize they bear, 
And harmonize their steps with stately care ; 
Bent to the morning, like a living rose, 
The immortal splendor of his face he shows, 
And where he glances, leaf and flower and wing 
Tremble with rapture, stirred in their repose. 
And deathless praises to the vine-god sing. 

ENVOI. 

Prince of the flute and ivy, all thy foes 
Record the bounty that thy grace bestows, 



96 The Praise of Diotiysns. 

But we, thy servants, to thy glory cling. 
And with no frigid lips our songs compose, 
And deathless praises to the vine-god sing. 



THE LOSS OF THE " EURYDICE." 

March, 24, 1878. 

Tired with the toils that know no end, 

On wintry seas long doomed to roam, 
They smiled to think that March could lend 
Such radiant winds to waft them home ; 
Long perils overpast. 
They stood for port at last, 
Close by the fair familiar water-way, 
And on their sunlit lee 
All hearts were glad to see 
The crags of Culver through the shining day ; 
While every white-winged bird, 
Whose joyous cry they heard, 



98 The Loss of the ^'Eurydice.'" 

Seemed wild to shout the welcome that it bore 
Of love from friends on shore. 



Ah ! brief their joy, as days are brief 

In March, that loves not joy or sun ; 
O bitter to the heart of grief 

The port that never shall be won ; 
Fair ship, with all sail set, 
Didst thou perchance forget 
The changing times and treacherous winds of Spring ? 
And could those headlands gray 
Rehearse no tale to-day. 
Of wrecks they have seen, and many a grievous thing ? 
Thy towering cliff, Dunnose, 
Full many a secret knows, — 
Cry out in warning voice ! too much they dare ; 
Death gathers in the air. 



The Loss of the ^''Enrydicc." 99 

A wind blew sharp out of the north, 

And o'er the island-ridges rose 
A sound of tempest going forth, 

And murmur of approaching snows. 
Then through the sunlit air 
Streamed dark the lifted hair 
Of storm-cloud, gathering for the light's eclipse, 
And fiercely rose and fell 
The shriek of waves, the knell 
Of seamen, and the doom of wandering ships ; 
As with an eagle's cry 
The mighty storm rushed by. 
Trailing its robe of snow across the wave, 
And gulfed them like a grave. 

It passed ; it fell ; and all was still ; 

But, homebound wanderers, where were they ? 
The wind went down behind the hill, 



loo The Loss of the ''''Eurydice!' 

The sunset gilded half the bay. 

Ah ! loud bewildered sea, 

Vain, vain our trust in thee 
To bring our kinsfolk home, through storm and tide ! 

So sharp and swift the blow, 

Thyself dost hardly know 
Where now they rest whom thou didst bear and guide; 

Our human hearts may break, 
■ Cold Ocean, for thy sake, — 
Thou not the less canst paint in colors fair 

The eve of our despair. 

Not hard for heroes is the death 

That greets them from the cannon's lips, 
When heaven is red with flaming breath. 
And shakes with roar of sundering ships : 
When through the thunder-cloud 
Sounds to them, clear and loud, 



The Loss of the ^^Eurydice." 
The voice of England calling them by name ; 
And as their eyes grow dim 
They hear their nation's hymn, 
And know the prelude of immortal fame ; 
But sad indeed is this 
The meed of war to miss, 
And die for England, but in dying know 
They leave no name but woe. 

They cannot rest through coming years, 

In any ground that England owns, 
And billows salter than our tears 
Wash over their unhonored bones ; 
Yet in our hearts they rest • 
Not less revered and blest 
Than those, their brothers, who in fighting fell ; 
Nor shall our children hear 
Their name pronounced less dear, 



102 The Loss of the '"' Eurydice." 

When England's roll of gallant dead we tell ; 
For ever shall our ships, 
There, at the Solent's lips, 
Pass out to glory over their still bed, 
And praise the silent dead. 



SERENADE. 

The lemon-petals gently fall 

Within the windless Indian night, 

The wild liana'd waterfall 

Hangs, lingering like a ghostly light ; 
Drop down to me, and linger long, my heart's entire 
delight. 

Among the trees, the fiery flies 

Move slowly in their robes of flame ; 

Above them, through the liquid skies. 
The stars in squadrons do the same ; 
Move through the garden down to me, and softly 
speak my name ? 



I04 Serenade. 

By midnight's moving heart that shakes 

The colored air and kindling gloom, 
By all the forms that beauty takes 
In fruit, in blossom, in perfume, 
Come down and still the aching doubts that haunt 
me and cqnsume ! 

Else if the chilly morning break 

And thou hast heard my voice in vain, 

Unmoved as is a forest-lake 

That through the branches hears the rain. 
Beware lest Love himself pass by to bless thee, 
and — refrain ! 



PALINGENESIS. 

I was fashioned long ago 
In an element of snow, 
And a white pair of cold wings 
Bore me towards sublunar things ; 
Over Thought's immense dominions, 
Floating on those chilly pinions. 
Long I wandered faint and thin, 
As a leaf the wind may spin. 
And the tossing flashing sea 
Moaned and whispered under me, 
And the mountains of man's mind 
Cast short shadows far behind. 



I o 6 PaliiJgoiesis. 

And the rivers of the soul, 
That still thunder as they roll, 
At my cold height streamed and fled 
Silent as a glacier-bed. 
I was light and gay and bold, 
Bathing in the sunset's gold, 
Though my forehead's only flush 
Came from the aurora's rush, 
And my white wrists held on high 
Showed no blue veins coursing by. 
Through the world a dream I went, 
Swathed in a frozen element, 
Watching with a temperate breath 
All the masque of birth and death, 
Pleased to watch around, below, 
The currents of emotion flow, 
Pleased in my insane conceit 
That I had no heart to beat. 



Palingenesis. 107 

But, one morning, as I flew 
Higher in the vault of blue, 
On a storm's eccentric curve 
All my flight began to swerve. 
Ah ! my crystal limbs expire 
In this new domain of fire ! 
Ah ! my daedal wings must scorch 
In this vast aerial torch, 
And my fairy garments made 
Of the frost's breath, all will fade ' 



Shrieking in a robe of pain, 
Darkness fell upon my brain. 
When I wakened, far away 
In a still green dell I lay, 
Shivering, naked ; warm within, 
What was this I heard begin 



1 o 8 Palingenesis. 

Throbbing, pulsing, like the sound 
Of a hammer underground ? 
Then I caught a voice, repeating, 
*' 'Tis thy new-born heart that's beating. 

Since that day I have not flown 
O'er the radiant world alone ; 
I am all content to follow 
Love round this one mountain-hollow ; 
Weak I am, and flushed with feeling 
Tender hopes across me stealing ; 
Tears between my eyelids creep, 
And I waken still to weep ; 
Often as I walk along 
I am agonized with song, 
Thoughts of one beloved form 
Lash me like a sudden storm. 



Palingenesis. 109 

And for days I travel wholly 
Muffled up in melancholy ; 
Yet for all this weary pain 
I would not be calm again, 
Yield the warmth and flush and riot 
For my earlier crystal quiet, 
Or this burning flesh resign 
For those wings and robes of mine ; 
Having tasted Life and Breath 
And the bitter Fear of Death, 
Who could any more endure 
That chill aether rare and pure ? 
Having known the ache of loving, 
And the warm veins' stir and moving. 
And the yearning hopes that start. 
Who could live without a heart ? 



THE SISTERS. 

a dorian idyl. 

Philenion. Lysidice. 

lysidice. 

Dearest, the onyx lamp is at thy side, 
The vine-surrounded casement open wide, 
And on the floor's mosaic I have set 
Green sprigs of rue and buds of serpolet. 
And still the rain upon their leaves is wet. 
Farewell, farewell, and sing thyself to sleep. 

PHILENION. 

I fear my dreams will scarce be long or deep. 



The Sisters. 1 1 1 

LYSIDICE. 

Ah ! let me close you, burning eyes and blue ! 
Melt to a cloud, and film yourselves in dew, 
Else must I kiss you under either brow ! 

PHILENION. 

I ought to soothe myself to slumber now 
Were kisses poppies or oblivion love ! 

LYSIDICE. 

Yea, soon behind our dear pomegranate grove 
The large slow-footed moon will glide and set, 
And all the world its weariness forget. 

PHILENION. 

Bow down once more that little curly head ; 
And lay those soft arms on the saffron bed ; 
Among the trees, and where the shade is deep, 
Who comes to-night when all the world's asleep ? 



112 The Sisters. 

LYSIDICE. 

Oh, hush ! he will not see me, will not know 
That I can hear his footfall there below. 

PHILENION. 

And whilst thou listenest for his wandering feet, 
May I not also keep my vigil, sweet ? 

LYSIDICE. 

Thou hast no reason, dear, to lie awake ; 
I seek to sleep but can not for love's sake. 
Ah, who has told thee that he comes at night ? 
I hardly told my heart my heart's delight. 
He never sees, he never hears me there, 
I lie, with fluttering pulse, till unaware 
His presence seems to quicken all the air. 
Is he not god-like, dear Philenion ? 
Like Paris when the the triple deity shone 



The Sistejs. 113 

Around his face and shoulders in a flame ? 
Like great Adonis when the Cyprian came 
And flushed him with embraces ? Ah ! that smile ! 
I fain for shame must hide my face awhile ! 
Ah ! pity for my love's sake, — since thy breast 
Has no such reason for a sick unrest. 

PHILENION. 

Dear child, young love thinks ever it knows best. 
And I seem old to thee, and past my time. 
Five years, forsooth, beyond thy budding prime. 

LYSIDICE. 

Last morn he came, and with his arms he led 
A new-washed lamb with roses round its head ; 
He seemed to mean the lovely gift for me. 
But blushed too much my blushing face to see — 
How sweet it is to tell thee all my woe. 



1 1 4 The Sisters. 

PHILENION. 

Speak on, nor heed, love, that I tremble so, 

LYSIDICE, 

I stole up towards him when his flocks lay down 
From stress of noontide on the pastures brown ; 
Before him flashed a distant streak of sea, 
Behind him rose a whispering tamarisk-tree. 
I listened close, and, sister, ere he set 
The laughing calathus his lips to wet, 
His eyes were sparkling, and — it might not be — 
I thought he whispered low " Lysidice ! " 

PHILENION. 

Behind that tree, and where the olives throw 
A silver shadow on the leaves below, 
Say, hast thou been ? 



The Sisters. 1 1 5 

LYSmiCE. 

Yea, where the boughs divide 
And show, half nestled in the dim hill-side 
A noiseless and untrampled place of tombs. 
Thou weepest, sister, for the lamp illumes 
The shining fringes of those sweetest eyes ? 

PHILENION, 

Ah ! child, thou knowest not what sorrow lies 
In memory ; thou art rich in thy to-day, 
Let me go silent on a sadder way. 

LYSIDICE. 

A burning tear has dropped upon my hand. 
Have I done ill ? I cannot understand ! 

PHILENION. 

Among the graves that fill that olive shade 
I wandered once, just such a joyous maid 



J 1 6 The Sisters. 

As thou. Within my circling hands I held 
A young cicala, who, by song impelled. 
Struck with his feet the cithern of his wings ; 
I laughed, inspired by all the amorous things 
The sacred creature hinted, till I threw 
Backward my head, and caught against the blue 
A man's keen face that looked me through and 
through. 

LYSIDICE. 

Let me come nearer, for you whisper low. 

PHILENION. 

I spread my fingers, let the wild wings go, 
Sprang to my feet, and would have fled, but he 
Was swifter, and his arms encompassed me. 
Beneath the shade he wooed my fears away. 
And showed the channel where his shallop lay ; 



The Sisters. i r 7 

He lived upon the seas. Oh ! strange and sweet 
To sit at Aphrodite's awful feet ! 
Next morn I stole, and laid across her shrine 
A fillet of these wine-dark locks of mine, 
An ivy wreath, a grasshopper in gold. 
She rose from out the tingling foam and cold ; 
She rules it still, and when I heard the roar 
Of distant waves I prayed to her the more, 
But all in vain. 



LYSIDICE. 

I too — but, sister, swear, 
Reveal to none at all my foolish care, — 
I, too, before the dawn to-day hung up 
In Aphrodite's shrine my silver cup 
Engraved with massy combats of old kings. 



ii8 The Sisters. 

PHILENIOX. 

I pray the gods that with all pleasant things 
Thy lite at all times may be crowned and blest, 
May all the sweets into thy cup be pressed 
That the sad gods forgot in mixing mine. 

LVSIDICE, 

Tell me what end came of this love of thine ? 

PHILEXIOX. 

There is but one fixed goal where love may fare 
And ever}- lover that the world shall bear ; 
After brief space or lengthened, weal or woe, 
They downward and in solitude must go 
Where the Queen sits with poppies round her hair. 
Brief was our time for passion, scant and rare 
The hours of pleasure in my life have been. 
One chill October night when airs were keen, 



The Sisters. 1 1 g 

And I within the quiet house began 
To clear the soft white spinning wool a span 
Forth from my knees, and thou wert bent to hold 
The oil-press slowly oozing liquid gold, 
Silent, before the fire, we two alone, 
There came out of the dark a wailing moan, — 
His voice in vision, — and I rose, but thou 
Heard'st nothing, and knew'st nothing of my woe. 
I felt that far away at sea his breath 
Had called on mine at the last hour of death, 
And through the thundering foam ar\;i roaring tide. 
My heart had heard the whisper as he died. 
Yea, Aphrodite, to whom sea-wives pray, 
Had heard my prayer in her own mystic way. 

LYSIDICE, 

Sweetest, I dare not look into thine eyes, 
So pure and sad, so tender and so wise ; 



I20 , The Sisters. 

What shall I do to make thy heart forget 

My foolish hardness ? See, my cheeks are wet 

With passionate falling of remorseful tears. 

PHILENION. 

Thou hast the spring-tide lightness of thy years, 

Sister ! Behold, my arms are open wide. 

Those vain reproaches in this bosom hide ! 

Dream not that life has lost all bliss for me, 

Content to love and live again in thee. 

Fair throbbing head, and flowing wealth of tress, 

Alive in its own glancing loveliness 

Soft neck, warm hands, and best of all, I know, 

Clear virgin heart fast beating down below, 

These are my loves, and till that sacred hour 

W len Love shall crown thee with his mother's flower, 

And I into the strong hands of a man 

Shall give thee, as a sister only can. 



The Sisters. i 

These are my care, and all my life shall be 
Absorbed in conquering thy destiny ; 
What woes the gods may for our heads prepare 
With cheerful countenance and instant prayer 
I will prevail that I alone may bear. 
But when that day of days at last shall dawn 
When underneath the platan on the lawn 
Our hands suspend the wreath of dripping buds, 
Your lotos-garland, starred with multitudes 
Of nuptial blossoms steeped in rich perfume, 
When all the maidens throng to view the room 
Along whose walls the town's best art provides 
Sweet amorous stories incident to brides, 
When crowned with hyacinths, a chorus loud, 
The virgins chaunt thy praises in a crowd. 
And only hush, when on the ground they pour 
The fragrant oil, one last libation more, 
Then, darling,, oh ! may I be there to weep 



122 The Sisters. 

Still tears of ecstasy that downward creep, 

May holy Cypris round thy body twine 

The sacred girdle of her charm divine, 

And then may Love, all swallowed up in thee, 

Forget, yea ! even in dreams, to visit me. 



THE FARM. 

Far in the soft warm west 
There lies an orchard-nest, 
Where every spring the black-caps come 
And build themselves a downy home. 

The apple-boughs entwine, 

And make a network fine 
Through which the morning vapors pass 
That rise from off the dewy grass. 

And when the spring-warmth shoots 
Along the apple roots, 



124 T^i*^ Farm. 

The gnarled old boughs grow full of buds 
That gleam and leaf in multitudes. 

And then, first cold and white, 
Soon flushing with delight, 
The blossom-heads come out and blow. 
And mimic sunset-tinted snow. 

Just where my farm-house ends 

A single gable bends. 
And one small window, ivy-bound, 
Looks into this enchanted ground. 

I sit there while T write, 
And dream in the dim light 
That floods the n isty orchard through, 
A pale-green vapor .inged with blue. 



The Farm. 125 

And watch the growing year, 
The flowers that spring and peer, 

The apple-bloom that melts away, 

The colors of the changing day. 

The falling blossom fills 

The cups of daffodils, 
That loll their perfume-haunted heads 
Along the feathery parsley-beds. 

And then the young girls come 
To take the gold flowers home ; 
They stand there, laughing, lilac-white, 
Within the orchard's green twilight. 

The rough old walls decay, 
And moulder day by day, 



126 The Farm. 

The fern-roots tear them, stone by stone, 
The ivy drags them, overgrown ; 

But still they serve to keep 
This little shrine of sleep 
Intact for singing birds and bees 
And lovers no less shy than these. 

Soft perfumes blown my way 

Remind me day by day 
How spring and summer flowers arrange 
Their aromatic interchange. 

For, in the still warm night, 

I taste the faint delight 
Of dim white violets that lie 
Far down in depths of greenery. 



The Farm. 127 

And from the wild white rose 
That in my window blows, 
At dawn an odor pure and fine 
Comes drifting like the scent of wine. 

I live in flower and tree ; 

My own life seems to me 
A fading trifle scarcely worth 
The notice of the jocund earth. 

Nor seems it strange indeed 

To hold the happy creed 
That all fair things that bloom and die 
Have conscious life as well as I. 

That not in.vain arise 
The speedwell's azure eyes, 



128 • The Farm. 

Like stars upon the river's brink, 
That shine unseen of us, and sink. 

That not for Man is made 
All color, light and shade, 
All beauty ripened out of sight, — 
But to fulfil its own delight. 

The black-caps croon and swing 
Deep in the night, and sing 
No songs in which man's life is blent, 
But to embody their content. 

Then let me joy to be 
Alive with bird and tree, 
And have no haughtier aim than this 
To be a partner in their bliss. 



129 Tlic Farm. 

So shall my soul at peace 
From anxious carping cease, 
Fed slowly like a wholesome bud 
With sap of healthy thoughts and good. 

That when at last I die, 
No praise may earth deny, 

But with her living forms combine 

To chant a threnody divine. 



THE PIPE-PLAYER. 

Cool, and palm-shaded from the torrid heat, 
The young brown tenor puts his singing by, 
And sets the twin pipe to his lips to try 

Some air of bulrush-glooms where lovers meet ; 

O swart musician, time and fame are fleet, 
Brief all delight, and youth's feet fain to fly ! 
Pipe on in peace ! To-morrow must we die ? 

What matter, if our life to-day be sweet ! 

Soon, soon, the silver paper-reeds that sigh 
Along the Sacred River will repeat 
The echo of the dark-stoled bearers' feet. 

Who carry you, with wailing, where must lie 

Your swathed and withered body, by and by, 
In perfumed darkness with the grains of wheat. 



IN THE BAY. 

Far out to east one streak of golden light 
Shows where the lines of sea and heaven unite, — 

White heaven shot through with film of flying 
cloud, 
Gray sea the wind just flutters and makes bright, 

And wakes to music neither low nor loud. 

Two horns jut out, and join, and rim the bay, 
Save where a snow-white strip of shingle may 

Break through the bar, where, black as black 
can be, 
Their steep and hollow rocks resound all day 

The jarred susurrus of the tumbling sea. 



132 In the Bay. 

Here on a sunny shelf, while hot the cair 

Flooded our limbs and faces, brown and bare, 

We lounged and shouted, plashing with slow feet 
The warm and tidal pools that wasted there. 

And down below us saw the sea-foam beat. 

Then, leaping down together with a cry, 

I watched them dash into the waves, and fly 

Around the shallows as a sea-bird bends. 
Tossing the froth and streaming, and then I 

Plunged like Arion to my dolphin -friends. 

The cool impassive water clung and pressed 
Around our buoyant bodies, head and breast ; 

Downward I sank through green and liquid gloom. 
By all the streams of shoreward seas caressed. 

Dark vitreous depths by faint cross-lights illumed. 



I 71 the Bay. 133 

And rising once again to sunlit air - 
We flung the salt-drip back from beard and hair, 

And shouted to the sun, and knew no more 
The trodden earth, with all its pain and care, 

But set our faces sea-ward from the shore. 

Then, lo ! the narrow streak of eastern light 
Along the dark sea's line, began to smite 

Its radiance up the heaven ; the flying mist 
Sped from the sky, and left it gold and white, 

And made the tossing sea like amethyst. 

Midway between the rocks that girt the bay, 
An islet rose, of rock as black as they ; 

Sombre it stood against the glowing sky 
And two of us swam out to it straightway, 

And cleft the waves with strenuous arm and thigh. 



134 If^ f^'f' Bciy- 

And as 1 strove and wrestled in the race, 

I turned and saw my comrade's merry face ; 

The sunHght fell upon his hair, and through 
The film of water showed the sinewy grace 

Of white limbs, bright against the sea's green-blue. 

So, laughingly, we won the rock, and then 
Climbed up and waited for our fellow-men ; 

Sat on the eastward brink of it, and let 
The cold foam cling upon our feet again. 

And plash our limbs with tangle crushed and wet. 

There, holding back the wet hair from my eyes, 
The moment seized me with its strange surprise ; 

Straightway I lost all sense of present things 
And, in the spirit, as an eagle flies, 

I floated to the sunrise on wide wings. 



Til the Bay. 135 

Some antique frenzy sliding through my brain 
Made natural thought a moon upon the wane, 

Fast fading in a vague and silvery sky ; — 
I know not if such moments be not gain ; 

They teach us surely what it is to die. 

But suddenly my comrade spoke ; the sound 
Recalled my soul again to common ground ; 

And now, like sea-gods on a holiday, 
My friends were tumbling in the foam around, 

And made the waters hoary with their play. 

With that, I spread my naked arms, and drew 
My hands together o'er my head, and knew 

That all was changing into cool repose, 
And while into the pulsing deep I flew 

My glad heart sang its greeting ; ah ! who knows. 



136 In the Bay. 

What power the sea may have to understand, 

Since all night long it whispers to the land, 

And moans along the shallows, and cries out 
Where skerries in the lonely channels stand, 

And sounds in drowning ears a mighty shout ? 

" Sea that I love, with arms extended wide, 
I clasp you as the bridegroom clasps the bride ; 

Strong sea, receive me throbbing ; close me round 
With tender firm embracings ! Not denied, 

I plunge and revel in thy cool profound ! 

'' There are who fear thee ; what have I to fear ? 
Lover, whose frowns and very wrath are dear ! 

Shake out the odors of the windy waves, 
Sound thy dim music that my ears may hear ; 

I shall not tremble though thy channels rave ! 



In the Bay. 137 

" Have I not known thee ? Lo ! thy breath was mild 
About my body when I was a child ; 

My hair was blanched with sea-winds full of brine ; 
No voice beguiled me as thy voice beguiled ; 

The loveliest face my childhood knew was thine I 

" Then on the shore in shadow ; but to-day 
I plunge far out into the sun-lit spray ; 

A child's heart gave thee all a child's heart can, 
But now I love thee in a bolder way, 

And take the fiercer pastime of a man. 

" Nor I alone enjoy thee ! Here a score, 
Comrades of mine and still a million more 

Might leap to thee ; thou would'st rejoice again, 
Like her of old whose mystic body bore 

As many breasts as there are mouths of men ! 



138 In the Bay. 

*' Clinging, thy cool spray makes* us thine alone ; 
We have no human passion of our own ; 

Here all is thine, prone body and dumb soul ; 
Thine for thy waves to dash, thy foam to crown, 

Thy circling eddies to caress and roll ! " 

With that I shot along the glittering sea, 
Parting the foam, and plunging full of glee, 

Tossed back my tangled hair, and struck far out 
Where orient sunrise paved a path for me. 

And whispering u^arss returned my lyric shout. 

Behind me and around me, lithe and fair, 

Like Triton-kings at sport my comrades were, — 

Some tossing conchs that they had dived to find, 
Some spreading ruddy limbs and sunshot hair 

To woo the soft cool kisses of the wind. 



In the Bay. 139 

It seemed the sea had heard my hymn of praise, 
And laughed beneath the torrid sky ablaze ; 

The pure green water lapped us, warm and red ; 
The sweet life throbbed in us in wondrous ways ; 

We let the sunlight stream on hands and head. 

Ah ! for the sky put off its robe of gold ; 
A sharp wind blew out of a cloudy fold ; 

The bitter sea but mocked us ? To the core 
The keen breeze pierced us with a cutting cold, 

And sad and numb we huddled to the shore. 

So pass life's ecstasies, and yet, ah me ! 
What sorrow if no change should ever be. 

Since, out of grieving at a present blight, 
Come sweeter wafts of garnered memory. 

And sweeter yearning for a new delight. 



140 /// the Bay. 

And but for that chill end in rain and wind, 

I know not if my changing brain would find 

On its palimpsest memories of that day, 
When full of life and youth and careless mind 

We dashed and shouted in the sunlit bay. 



• SUNSHINE IN MARCH. 

Where are you, Sylvia, where ? 
For our own bird, the woodpecker, is here, 
Calling on you with cheerful tappings loud ! 
The breathing heavens are full of liquid light ; 
The dew is on the meadow like a cloud ; 
The earth is moving in her green delight — 
Her spiritual crocuses shoot through, 
And rathe hepaticas in rose and blue ; 
But snow-drops that awaited you so long 
Died at the thrush's song 

"Adieu, adieu !" they said. 

"We saw the skirts of glory, and we fade ; 



142 Sunshine in March. 

We were the hopeless lovers of the Spring, 

Too young, as yet, for any love of ours ; 

She is harsh, not having heard the white-throat sing ; 

She is cold, not knowing the tender April showers ; 

Yet have we felt her, as the buried grain 

May feel the rustle of the unfallen rain ; 

We have known her, as the star that sets too soon 

Bows to the unseen moon." 



THE BATH. 

With rosy palms against her bosom pressed 

To stay the shudder that she dreads of old, 

Lysidice glides down, till silver-cold 
The water girdles half her glowing breast ; 
A yellow butterfly on flowery quest 

Rifles the roses that her tresses hold : 

A breeze comes wandering through the fold on fold 
Of draperies curtaining her shrine of rest. 
Soft beauty, like her kindred petals strewed 

Along the crystal coolness, there she lies. 

What vision gratifies those gentle eyes ? 
She dreams she stands where yesterday she stood 
Where, while the whole arena shrieks for blood, 

Hot in the sand a gladiator dies. 



THE BALLAD OF DEAD CITIES. 

TO A. L. 

Where are the cities of the plain ? 

And where the shrines of rapt Bethel ? 
And Calah built of Tubal-Cain ? 

And Shinar whence King Amraphel 

Came out in arms and fought, and fell 
Decoyed into the pits of slime 

By Siddim, and sent sheer to hell ; 
Where are the cities of old time ? 

Where now is Karnak, that great fane, 
With granite built, a miracle ? 

And Luxor smooth without a stain, 
Whose graven scripture still Ave spell ? 
The jackal and the owl may tell, 



The Ballad of Dead Cities. 145 

Dark snakes around their ruins climb, 

They fade Hke echo in a shell ; 
Where are the cities of old time ? 

And where is white Shushan, again, 
Where Vashti's beauty bore the bell, 

And all the Jewish oil and grain 
Were brought to Mithridath to sell, 
Where Nehemiah would not dwell, 

Because another town sublime 
Decoyed him with her oracle ? 

Where are the cities of old time ? 

ENVOI. 

Prince, with a dolorous, ceaseless knell 
Above their wasted toil and crime 

The waters of oblivion swell : 
Where are the cities of old time ? 



THE NEW ENDYMION. 

Behind the ghostly poplar-trees 

The moon rose high when Celia died ; 

To win the flickering midnight breeze 
I'd thrown the curtains both aside, 

And this was how I came to see 

In my most tearless agony 

The red moon in the poplar-tree. 

The scent of lilies, sickly sweet. 

Just floated through the shining air, 

And the hot perfume of the wheat 
Hung like a vapor everywhere ; 

The anguish of the summer night, 



The Netv Endymion. 147 

Close, breathless, sultry, still and bright, 
Seemed without hope and infinite. 

But most the round orb of the moon. 
That one by one the branches kissed, 

Drawn out of her flushed waking swoon, 
And changed to gold above the mist, 

Seemed like a rancorous enemy, 

Who climbed by stairs into the sky 

Better to see my darling die. 

And I remembered, hushed at heart. 
Without a tear, though she was dead, — 

As if my future had no part 

In that cold past upon the bed, — 

I thought how much the moon had seen 

Of happy days that lay between 

The sweet may-be and sad has-been. 



The New Endymion. 
Quivering to feel how, every time 

I forged another Hnk of love, 
The mystic moon had seemed to climb, 

And watch my lips, and hang above ; 
I shuddered, and my thoughts I cast, 
While all my veins were beating fast, 
Across my memories of the past. 

I thought of that clear tropic night. 
When, like a bird, through Indian Seas, 

Our ship unfolded wings of light. 
And lost the land by soft degrees : 

She paced the deck ; I heard the stix 

Of robes, her beauty's minister. 

And at the last I spoke to her. 

But while our budding fortunes crossed, 
Amid her courteous flights of speech. 



149 "^^^^ New Endymion. 

My careless vision slowly lost 

The range of palm-trees on the beach, 
Whereat another light began 
Behind the isles of Andaman, 
And up the golden moonlight ran. 

I turned and saw her gentle face. 

Those violet moon-shot eyes I saw, 
And in that very hour and place 
Bent like a vassal to her law ; 
But yet I dared not speak, and soon 
She rose and suddenly had gone 
And left me to the florid moon. 

I thought me of a winter street, 
And how the first time, on my arm, 

I felt her gentle pulses beat 
As in a virgin vague alarm ; 



150 The Neiv Eiidyinion. 

We let the rest pass on before, 
And talking lingered, more and more 
Hid in the city's kindly roar. 

The great crowd caught us in its net, 
And pressed us closer to each other ; 

We spoke of all since last we met, 

And laughed like sister and like brother ; 

I all the while, with fixed intent. 

Towards some more serious silence bent 

To say a certain thing I meant. 

In vain, — till out of the blue night, 
Behind the vast cathedral spire. 

There swam into our sudden sight 
A globe of honey-colored fire. 

And in the wonder of the view 



The New Endyinion. 151 

She hushed her talking, and I knew 
How kind her heart was and how true. 

I thought, too, of the magic hour 

When in one sacred chamber bound, 

She loosed her wreath of orange-flower, 
And dropped her wealth of hair uncrowned 

And I, with tenderest fingers laced 

About the slimness of her waist, 

Her cool and cream-white throat embraced. 

And through this window-pane we glanced 

And saw the silvery soft may-moon, — 
Like some young maenad that hath danced 

Till her bright head is in a swoon, — 
Lean up against the poplar-tree, 
And in the wild wind we could see 
The leaves fold round her amorously. 



152 The Neiv Endymion. 

They folded round as sisters might 

Around a maiden sick to death, 
Whom some perfidious churl and light 

Had cheated with delusive breath : 
The moon's white face that golden hour 
Had something of the tints that lour 
About the aconite in flower. 

Yet that last night when Celia died 
The moon's face had a stranger air, 

A mien of victory, like a bride. 
Enchanted, resolute and fair : 

Through all my sorrow, all my pain, 

I gazed upon the orb again, 

Till my pent anguish gushed in rain ; 

And then upon her face I fell, 

My sweet, lost Celia' s, and my arms 



The New Endytm'on. 153 

Clasped round once more the miracle 

Of her divine and tender charms ; 
The room grew dark, I know not why, — 
I gazed and saw that, suddenly, 
The moon was ashy in the sky. 

Then I arose and left the dead. 

And wandered up into the wood, 
Till briar and honeysuckle shed 
A subtle odor where I stood ; 
And there, beneath the boughs that lie 
Thin-leaved against the stars on high. 
The moon swam down the liquid sky. 

And since that night of pain and love 

I have not felt as others feel, 
An alien in their courts I move. 

And from their noisy world I steal ; 



1 54 The New Endymion. 

The common ways of life I shun, 
And quit my comrades every one, 
And live sequestered from the sun. 

But when the crescent moon begins 
To fill her slender bow with fire, 
A dream upon my fancy wins, 

I languish with a fond desire ; 
I stride along the mountain-tops, 
But when behind their range she drops. 
My heart within me leaps and stops. 

But every month one night I lie 
Upon the wild back of the hills, 

And watch the hollow of the sky 
Until the crystal dew distils ; 

And when the perfect moon appears 



The New Endymion. 155 

A golden paragon of spheres, 
I rise a god among my peers. 

Twelve times within the weary year 
That marvelous hour of joy returns, 

And till its rapture reappear 

My pulse is like a flame that burns ; 

I have no wonder, now, nor care 

For any woman's hands or hair. 

For any face, however fair. 

Ah ! what am I that she should bend 
Her glorious godship down to me ? 

My mortal weakness cannot lend 
Fresh light to her vast deity ! 

I know not ! only this I know — 

She loves me, she has willed it so, 

And blindly in her light I go. 



156 The New Endymion. 

Sweet, make me as a mountain pool 

With thy soft radiance mirrored o'er, 
Or hke the moon-fern, gray and cool. 

That hides thy virtue in its core ; 
I must grow old and pass away ; 
Thou art immortal ; love, I pray. 
Bend o'er me on my fatal day ! 



MISTRUST. 

The peacock screamed and strutted in the court, 
The fountain flashed its crystal to the sun, 
The noisy life of noon was just begun, 

And happy men forgot that life was short ; 

We two stood, laughing, at the turret-pane, 
When some Apollo of the ranks of Mars, 
Crimson with plumes and glittering like the stars, 

Galloped across below, and there drew rein. 

To see so confident a man-at-arms 

My heart sank suddenly from sun to shade, 

But she, who knows the least of Love's alarms, 
Laid one soft hand upon my throbbing wrist, 
And in her eyes I read the choice she made, 
And anger slumbered like a tired child kissed. 



WIND OF PROVENCE. 

O wind of Provence, subtle wind that blows 
Through coverts of the impenetrable rose, 
O musical soft wind, come near to me, 
Come down into these hollows by the sea, 
O wind of Provence, heavy with the rose ! 

How once along the blue sea's battlements 
Thy amorous rose-trees poured their spicy scents ! 
The heavy perfume streamed down granite walls, 
Where now the prickly cactus gibes and crawls 
Down towards cold waves from grim rock-battle- 
ments. 



Wind of Provence. 159 

Of all the attar, sharp and resinous, 
The spines and stalks alone are left for us, 
And so much sickly essence as may cleave 
About the hands ol maidens when they weave 
Wild roses into wreaths of bloom for us. 

Where are the old days vanished, ah ! who knows ! 

When all the wide world blossomed with the rose, 
When all the world was full of frank desire, 
When love was passion and when flowers were fire. 

Where are the old days vanished, ah ! who knows ? 

Come down, O wind of Provence, sing again 
In my lulled ears, for quenching of all pain, 
The litany of endless amorous hours, 
The song of songs that blossomed with the flowers. 
And brightened when the flowers decayed again. 



i6o Wind of Provence. 

When Ermengarde, the lady of Narbonne, 
Star-like, above the silken tourney shone, 

With powdered gold upon her ruddy hair ; 

There was no woman anywhere so fair 
As Ermengarde, the glory of Narbonne I 

Love's ladies paced the sward beneath all towers, 
Their grass-green satins stirred the daisy-flowers ; 
No knight or dame was pale with spent desire, 
For pleasure served them as an altar-fire ; 
Their mortal spirits faded like soft flowers. 

Some wreaths and robes, a lute with mouldered 
strings, 

One clear perennial song on deathless wings. 
Still tell us later men of those delights 
That spent their happy days and passionate nights. 

When Life smote gaily on his tense harp-strings. 



Wifid of Provence. i6i 

Now cold earth covers all of them with death ; 
The gray world travels on with failing breath, 
Long having passed her prime, and twilight comes, 
And some men wait for dream-millenniums, 
But most are gathering up their robes for death. 

The old air hangs about us cold and strange ; 
We stand like blind men, wistful for a change, 

But only darkness lies on either hand, 

And in a sinister, unlovely land, 
We cling together, waiting for the change. 

But in this little interval of rest 

May one not press the rose-flower to his breast. 

The sanguine rose whose passionate delight 

In amorous days of old was infinite. 
And now, like some narcotic, sings of rest ? 



1 62 WtJid of Provence. 

So be it ! I, the child of this last age, 
To whom the shadow of death is heritage, 

Will set my face to dream against the past ; 

This time of tears and trouble cannot last. 
The dawn must some time herald a new age. 

Till then, O wind of Provence, thrill my brain 

With musk and terebinth and dewy rain 

From over-luscious roses, and declare 

That wine is delicate and woman fair ; 

O wind of Provence, shall I call in vain ? 



RONDEAU. 

If Love should faint, and half decline 

Below the fit meridian sign, 

And shorn of all his golden dress, 
His royal state and loveliness, 

Be no more worth a heart like thine, 

Let not thy nobler passion pine, 

But with a charity divine, 

Let Memory ply her soft address 
If Love should faint ; 

And oh! this laggard heart of mine. 

Like some halt pilgrim stirred with wine, 



164 Rondeau. 

Shall ache in pity's dear distress, 
Until the balms of thy caress 
To work the finished cure combine, 
If Love should faint. 



MOORLAND. 

Now the buttercups of May 

Twinkle fainter day by day, 

And the stalks of flowering clover 
Make the June fields red all over,— 

Now the cuckoo, like a bell, 

Modulates a sad farewell. 

And the nightingale, perceiving 
Love's warm tokens, ends her grieving,- 

Let us twain arise and go 

Where the freshening breezes blow, 



1 66 Moorland. 

Where the granite giant moulders 
In his circling cairn of boulders ! 

Just a year ago to-day, 

Friend, we climbed the self-same way, 
Through the village-green, and higher 
Past the smithy's thundering fire. 

Up and up and where the hill 

Wound us by the cider-still ; 

Where the scythers from the meadow 
Sat along the hedge for shadow ; 

Where the little wayside inn 
Signals that the moors begin, 
Ah ! remember all our laughter, 
Loitering at the bar, — and after ! 



Moor/and. 167 

All must be the same to-day, 
All must look the same old way, 

Only that the sweet child-maiden 

We admired so well, fruit-faden, 

Now, like an expanded bud, 

Must be blown to womanhood, 
And the fuller lips and bosom 
Must proclaim the perfect blossom. 

One step more ! Before us, lo ! 
Sheer the great ravine below, 

Empty, save where one brown plover 

Wheels across the ferny cover ! 

Here, where all the valley lies 
Like a scroll before our eyes, 



i68 Moorland. 

Let us spend our golden leisure 
In a world of lazy pleasure. 

Comrade, let your heart forget 
All the thoughts that fray and fret ; 
Till the sun-down flares out yonder, 
Stretch here in the fern, and ponder. 

See, below us, where the stream 
Winds with broken silver gleam. 
How the nervous quivering sallows 
Bend and dare not touch the shallows ! 

In that willow-shaded pool. 
When last June the airs were cool, 
How we made the hot noon shiver 
With our plunge into the river. 



Moorland. 1 69 

In the sweet sun, side by side 

You and I and none beside ? 

Head and hands, thrown backward, slacken, 
Sunk into the soft warm bracken. 

Up in heaven a milky sky 

Floats across us leisurely ; 

When we close our eyes, the duller 
Half-light seems a faint red color. 

In this weary life of ours 
Pass too many leaden hours ; 

In our chronicles of passion 

Too much apes the world's dull fashion. 

If our spirits strive to be 
Pure and high in their degree, 



170 Moorland. 

Let us learn the soaring psean 
Under God's own empyrean. 

Leisure in the sun and air 
Makes the spirit strong and fair ; 
Flaccid veins and pallid features 
Are not fit for sky-born creatures. 

Come then, for the hours of May 

Wane and falter, day by day, 

And the thrushes' first June chorus 
Will have walked the woods before us ! 



THE GOLDEN ISLES. 

Sad would the salt waves be, 

And cold the singing sea, 
And dark the gulfs that echo to the seven-stringed 
lyre, 

If things were what they seem, 

If life had no fair dream, 
No mirage made to tip the dull sea-line with fire. 

Then Sleep would have no light, 
And Death no voice or sight. 
Their sister Sorrow, too, would be as blind as they, 
And in this world of doubt 



172 The Golden Isles. 

Our souls would roam about, 
And find no song to sing and no word good to say. 

Or else, in cloud and gloom 

The soul would read her doom, 
And sing a rune obscure above a murky sea, 

Dark phrases that would wrong 

The crystal fount of song, 
For lirnpid as a pearl the poet's thought should be. 

Not in the storm and rain, 
Not pale with grief and pain, 
But red with sunlit pulse and breathing health and 
hope. 
The bard in garments gay 
Should tread the sacred way 
That leads him towards his god high up the 
laurelled slope. 



The Golden Isles. 173 

But on the shores of time, 
Hearkening the breakers' chime 
Falhng by night and day along our human sand, 
, The poet sits and sees, 

Borne on the morning breeze, 
The phantom islands float a furlong from the land. 

The reverend forms they bear 
Of islands famed and fair, 
On whose keen rocks, of old, heroic fleets have 
struck. 
Whose marble dells have seen 
In garments pale and green 
The nymphs and gods go by to bring the shepherds 
luck. 

White are their crags, and blue 
Ravines divide them through, 



174 The Golden Isles. 

And like a violet shell their cliffs recede from shore; 

Between their fretted capes 

Fresh isles in lovely shapes 
Die on the horizon pale, and lapse in liquid light. 

Past that dim straitened shore, 

The Argive mother bore 
T he boy she brought to Zeus, pledge of the golden 
fee ; 

Here Delos, like a gem, 

Still feels Latona's hem 
A lordlier Naxos crowns a purpler arc of sea. 

There mines of Parian lie 
Hid from the sun's clear eye, 
And waiting still the lamp, the hammer, and the axe; 
And he who, pensive, sees 



The Golden Isles. 175 

These nobler Cyclades 
Forgets the ills of life, and nothing mortal lacks. 

But many an one, in vain, 

Puts out across the main, 
And thinks to leap on land and tread that magic 
shore ; 

He comes, for all his toil. 

No nearer to their soil, 
The isles are floating on, a furlong still before. 

So he contends, until 

The storm wind, harsh and chill. 
Beats on his sail, and blots the heaven with cloud 
and flame, 

And well indeed he fares. 

After a world of cares, 
Returning, if he reach the harbor whence he came. 



176 The Golden Isles. 

The poet sits and smiles, 

He knows the golden isles, 
He never hopes to win their cliffs, their marble mines, 

Reefs where their green sea raves. 

The coldness of their caves. 
The felspars full of light, their rosy corallines. 

All these he oft has sought. 
Led by his traveling thought. 
Their glorious distance hides no inward charm from 
him ; 
He would not have their day 
To common light decay, 
He loves their mystery best, and bids their shapes 
be dim. 

They solace all his pains, 
They animate his strains, 



The Golden Isles. 177 

Within their radiant glow he soon forgets the world; 

They bathe his torrid noons 

In the soft light of moons, 
They leave his lingering evenings tenderly empearled. 



As one who walks all day 

Along a dusty way, 
May turn aside to plunge in some sequestered pool, 

And so may straight forget 

His weariness and fret. 
So seeks the poet's heart those islands blue and cool. 



Content to know them there, 
Hung in the shining air. 
He trims no foolish sail to win the hopeless coast, 
His vision is enough. 



178 The Golden Isles. 

To feed his soul with love, 
And he who grasps too much may even himself be 
lost. 

He knows that, if he waits, 

One day the well-worn gates 
Of life will ope and send him westward o'er the 
wave ; 

Then will he reach ere night 

The isles of his delight, 
But they must float until they anchor in the grave. 



THE CHARCOAL-BURNER. 

He lives within the hollow wood, 

From one clear dell he seldom ranges ; 

His daily toil in solitude 

Revolves, but never changes. 

A still old man, with grizzled beard, 

Gray eye, bent shape, and smoke-tanned features. 
His quiet footstep is not feared 

By shyest woodland creatures. 

I love to watch the pale blue spire 

His scented labor builds above it ; 
I track the woodland by his fire, 

And, seen afar, I love it. 



i8o The Charcoal-Burner. 

It seems among the serious trees 

The emblem of a living pleasure, 
It animates the silences 

As with a tuneful measure. 

And dream not that such humdrum ways 
Fold naught of nature's charm around him 

The mystery of soundless days 

Hath sought for him and found him. 

He hides within his simple brain 

An instinct innocent and holy, 
The music of a wood-bird's strain, — 

Not blithe, nor melancholy. 

But hung upon the calm content 
Of wholesome leaf and bough and blossom- 



The Charcoal-Burner. i8i 

An unecstatic ravishment 
Born in a rustic bosom. 

He knows the moods of forest things , 
He holds, in his own speechless fashion, 

For helpless forms of fur and wings 
A mild paternal passion. 

Within his horny hand he holds 

The warm brood of the ruddy squirrel ; 

Their bushy mother storms and scolds, 
But knows no sense of peril. 

The dormouse shares his crumb of cheese, 
His homeward trudge the rabbits follow ; 

He finds, in angles of the trees. 
The cup-nest of the swallow. 



The Charcoal-Biirner. 

And through this sympathy perchance, 
The beating heart of Ufe he reaches 

Far more than we who idly dance 
An hour beneath the beeches. 

Our science and our empty pride, 
Our busy dream of introspection, 

To God seem vain and poor beside 
This dumb, sincere reflection. 

Yet he will die unsought, unknown, 

A nameless head-stone stand above him, 

And the vast woodland, vague and lone, 
Be all that's left to love him. 



SONG. 

There's a sleek thrush sits in the apple-tree 
When it blooms all over with rosy snow, 

And hark ! how he opens his heart to me, 
Till its inmost hopes and desires I know ! 

Blow, wind, blow. 
For the thrush will fly when the bloom must go. 

O a friend I had, and I loved him well, 
And his heart was open and sang to mine. 

And it pains me more than I choose to tell. 
That he cares no more if I laugh or pine. 

Friend of mine, 
Can the music fade out of love like thine ! 



SESTINA. 

ToF. H. 

" Fra tutti il primo Arnaldo Daniello 
Gran maestro d' amor. " — Petrarch. 

In fair Provence, the land of lute and rose, 
Arnaut, great master of the lore of love, 
First wrought sestines to win his lady's heart, 
For she was deaf when simpler staves he sang, 
And for her sake he broke the bonds of rhyme, 
And in this subtler measure hid his woe. 

" Harsh be my lines," cried Arnaut, " harsh the woe 
My lady, that enthorn'd and cruel rose, 
Inflicts on him that made her live in rhyme !" 



Sestlna. 185 

But through the metre spake the voice of Love, 
And like a wild-wood nightingale he sang 
Who thought in crabbed lays to ease his heart. 

« 

It is not told if her untoward heart 

Was melted by her poet's lyric woe, 

Or if in vain so amorously he sang ; 

Perchance through cloud of dark conceits he rose 

To nobler heights of philosophic love, 

And crowned his later years with sterner rhyme. 

This thing alone we know : the triple rhyme 
Of him who bared his vast and passionate heart 
To all the crossing flames of hate and love, 
Wears in the midst of all its storm of woe, — 
As some loud morn of March may bear a rose, — 
The impress of a song that Arnaut sang. 



1 86 Sestina. 

" Smith of his mother-tongue," the Frenchman sang 

Of Lancelot and of Galahad, the rhyme 

That beat so bloodlike at its core of rose, 

It stirred the sweet Francesca's gentle heart 

To take that kiss that brought her so much woe 

And sealed in fire her martyrdom of love. 

And Dante, full of her immortal love. 

Stayed his drear song, and softly, fondly sang 

As though his voice broke with that weight of woe ; 

And to this day we think of Arnaut's rhyme 

Whenever pity at the laboring heart 

On fair Francesca's memory drops the rose. 

Ah ! sovereign Love, forgive this weaker rhyme ! 
The men of old who sang were great at heart, 
Yet have we too known woe, and worn thy rose. 



ON A LUTE FOUND IN A SARCOPHAGUS. 

What curled and scented sun-girls, almond-eyed, 
With lotos-blossoms in their hands and hair, 
Have made their swarthy lovers call them fair. 

With these spent strings, when brutes were deified, 

And Memnon in the sunrise sprang and cried. 
And love-winds smote Bubastis, and the bare 
Black breasts of carven Pasht received the prayer 

Of suppliants bearing gifts from far and wide ! 

This lute has out-sung Egypt ; all the lives 
Of violent passion, and the vast calm art 
That lasts in granite only, all lie dead ; 

This little bird of song alone survives, 

As fresh as when its fluting smote the heart 
Last time the brown slave wore it garlanded. 



DE ROSIS HIBERNIS. 

Ambitious Nile, thy banks deplore 

Their Flavian patron's deep decay ; 
Thy Memphian pilot laughs no more 

To see the flower-boat float away ; 
Thy winter roses once were twined 

Across the gala streets of Rome, 
And thou, like Omphale, couldst bind 

The vanquished victor in his home. 

But if the barge that brought thy store 
Had foundered in the Lybian deep, 

It had not slain thy glory more 

Nor plunged thy rose in salter sleep ; 



De Rozis Hibernis. 189 

Not gods nor Caesars wait thee now, 

No jealous Ptestum dreads thy spring, 
Thy flower enfolds no augur's brow, 

And gives no poet strength to sing. 

Yet, surely, when the winds are low, 

And heaven is all alive with stars. 
Thy conscious roses still must glow 

Above thy dreaming nenuphars ; 
They recollect their high estate, 

The Roman honors they have known. 
And while they ponder Caesar's fate 

They cease to marvel at their own. 



LUBECK. 

We sat in Liibeck underneath 

The Hndens of the minster-close ; 

Round us the" city, still as death, 
Was gathered like a rose. 

The great red tower sprang over us, 
Far up a dome of sapphire glow 

More vast and clear and luminous 
Than English summers know. 

Faint flutings of the fluctuant breeze 
Sang from the orchards out of sight, 

And whispered through the linden-trees, 
And stirred the shadowy light. 



Liibeck. ipl 

And, whistling low, a gooseherd came. 

And led his flock across the grass ; 
And then we saw a burgher dame, 

Demurely smiling, pass. 

We sucked the juice from tangled skeins 

Of currants, rosy-red and white, 
And in the wind the ancient vanes 

Were creaking out of sight. 

And little maidens, too, came by, 
And shook their tails of flaxen hair ; 

We held a conclave, small and shy, 
To taste our juicy fare; 

Then, wandering down by mouldering towers, 
We reached at last a little knoll ; 



ig2 Lilbcck. 

And there, among the pansy-flowers, 
We read of " Atta Troll." 

How sweetly in the falling light 
The broad still river, like a moat, 

Swung, with its water-lilies white, 
And yellow buds afloat ! 

A little matter 1 but such moods 
Make up the sum of happy hours ; 

In uncongenial solitudes 

They come to us like flowers. 

So lay that afternoon to sleep 

Among your dearest pansy-knots,— 

The hushed herbarium where you keep 
Your heart's forget-me-nots, 



Liiheck. 193 

Remembering how the day went by - 

At Liibeck, by the minster-towers, 
Enshrined in all the mystery 

Of mediaeval hours. 



D. G. R. 

Master, whose very names have god-Hke power 
Of song and light divine, being his who went 
Unscathed through blearing fire omnipotent, 
Singing for men ; and his who hour by hour 
Stands in the imminent and splendid shower 
Of God's effulgence ; and being lastly blent 
With the warm light and odor effluent 
Of your own rhymes, our latest, loveliest dower. 
Not in our own land could my weakness mock 
Your strength with homage of my poor May-day, 
The applause of circling poets scared my song, 
But here where twenty thousand thunders shock 
The violent air for leagues of dim sea-way, 

Surely my heart may speak, nor do you wrong ! 



TO MY DAUGHTER. 

Thou hast the colors of the Spring, 
The gold of kingcups triumphing, 

The blue of wood-bells wild ; 
But winter-thoughts thy spirit fill, 
And thou art wandering from us still, 

Too young to be our child. 

Yet have thy fleeting smiles confessed, 
Thou dear and much-desired guest, 

That home is near at last ; 
Long lost in high mysterious lands, 
Close by our door thy spirit stands, 

Its journey well-nigh past. 



196 To My Daughter. 

Oh sweet bewildered soul, I watch 
The fountains of thine eyes, to catch 

New fancies bubbling there, 
To feel our common light, and lose 
The flush of strange ethereal hues 

Too dim for us to share ! 

Fade, cold immortal lights, and make 
This creature human for my sake, 

Since I am nought but clay ; 
An angel is too fine a thing 
To sit behind my chair and sing. 

And cheer my passing day. 

I smile, who could not smile, unless 
The air of rapt unconsciousness 
Passed, with the fading hours ; 



To My Daughter. 197 

I joy in every childish sign 
That proves the stranger less divine 
And much more meekly ours. 

I smile, as one by night who sees, 
Through mist of newly-budded trees, 

The clear Orion set, 
And knows that soon the dawn will fly 
In fire across the riven sky. 

And gild the woodlands wet. 



ALCYONE. 

SONNET. 
PHCEBUS. 

What voice is this that wails above the deep ? 

ALCYONE. 

A wife's, that mourns her fate and loveless days. 

PHCEBUS. 

What love lies buried in these water-ways ? 

ALCYONE. 

A husband's, hurried to eternal sleep. 

PHCEBUS. 

Cease, O beloved, cease to wail and weep ! 



Alcyone. 199 

ALCYONE. 

Wherefore ? 

PHCEBUS. 

The waters in a fiery blaze 
Proclaim the godhead of my healing rays. 

ALCYONE. 

No god can sow where fate hath stood to reap. 

PHCEBUS. 

Hold, wringing hands ! cease, piteous tears, to fall ! 

ALCYONE. 

But grief must rain and glut the passionate sea. 

PHCEBUS. 

Thou shalt forget this ocean and thy wrong, 
And I will bless the dead, though past recall. 

ALCYONE. 

What canst thou give to me or him in me ? 

PHOEBUS. 

A name in story and a light in song. 



THE WELL. 

Like this cold and mossy fount 
Which forgets the sun at noon, 

Sees just stars enough to count, 
And a vision of the moon, — 



Where the little stems and leaves, 
Round the edges of the well. 

Quiver, while the water grieves. 
At the tale it has to tell, — 

Where your bright face, peering through 
Two soft clouds of falling hair. 



The Well. 
Sees a dim and troubled view 
Of its own clear beauty there, — 

Such my heart is ; in it lies 
Your dear image all day long, 

But 'tis stirred with fears and sighs, 
And its dimness does you wrong. 



PERFUME. 

What gift for passionate lovers shall we find ? 

Not flowers nor books of verse suffice for me, 
. But splinters of the odorous cedar-tree, 
And tufts of pine-buds, oozy in the wind ; 
Give me young shoots of aromatic rind. 

Or samphire, redolent of sand and sea, 

For all such fragrances I deem to be 
Fit with my sharp desires to be combined. 
My heart is like a poet, whose one room. 

Scented with Latakia faint and fine, 

Dried rose leaves, and spilt attar, and old wine, 
From curtained windows gathers its warm gloom 

Round all but one sweet picture, where incline 
His thoughts and fancies mingled with perfume. 



VILLANELLE. 

Little mistress mine, good-bye ! 

I have been your sparrow true ; 
Dig my grave, for I must die. 

Waste no tear and heave no sigh ; 

Life should still be blithe for you, 
Little mistress mine, good-bye ! 

In your garden let me lie, 

Underneath the pointed yew 
Dig my grave, for I must die. 

We have loved the quiet sky 

With its tender arch of blue ; 
Little mistress mine, good-bye ! 



204 Villanelle. 

That I still may feel you nigh, 

In your virgin bosom, too, 
Dig my grave, for I must die. 

Let our garden-friends that fly 
Be the mourners, fit and few. 
Little mistress mine, good-bye ! 
Dig my grave, for I must die. 



EPITHALAMIUM. 

High in the organ-loft, with Hlied hair, 
Love plied the pedals with his snowy foot, 
Pouring forth music like the scent of fruit, 

And stirring all the incense-laden air ; 

We knelt before the altar's gold rail, where 

The priest stood robed, with chalice and palm- 
shoot. 
With music-men, who bore citole and lute. 

Behind us, and the attendant virgins fair ; 

And so our red aurora flashed to gold, 

Our dawn to sudden sun, and all the while 



2o6 Epithalatnium. 

The high-voiced children trebled clear and cold, 
The censer-boys went swinging down the aisle, 
And far above, with fingers strong and sure. 
Love closed our lives' triumphant overture. 



1870 — 71- 

The year that Henri Regnault died, — 

The sad red blossoming year of war, — 

All nations cast the lyre aside, 

And gazed through curved fingers far 
At horror, waste and wide. 

Not one new song from overseas 

Came to us ; who had ears to hear ? 

The kings of Europe's minstrelsies 

Walked, bowed, behind the harrowing year, 
Veiled, silent, ill at ease, 

For us the very name of man 

Grew hateful in that mist of blood ; 



2o8 1870 — 71. 

We talked of how new life began 
To exiles by the eastern flood, 
Flower-girdled in Japan. 

We dreamed of new delight begun 
In palm-encircled Indian shoals, 

Where men are colored by the sun, 

And wear out contemplative souls, 
And vanish one by one. 

We found no pleasure any more 

In all the whirl of Western thought ; 

The dreams that soothed our souls before 
Were burst like bubbles, and we sought 
New hopes on a new shore. 

The men who sang that pain was sweet 
Shuddered to see the masque of death 



1870-71. 209 

Storm by with myriad thundering feet ; 

The sudden truth caught up our breath, 
Our thoats hke pulses beat. 

The songs of pale emaciate hours, 

The fungus-growth of years of peace, 

Withered before us like mown flowers ; 
We found no pleasure more in these. 
When bullets fell in showers. 

For men whose robes are dashed with blood, 
What joy to dream of gorgeous stairs, 

Stained with the torturing interlude 

That soothed a Sultan's midday prayers, 
In old days harsh and rude ? 

For men whose lips are blanched and white, 
With aching wounds and torturing thirst, 



2IO 1870 — "Jl, 

What charm in canvas shot with light, 
And pale with faces cleft and curst, 
Past life and life's delight ? 

And when the war had passed, and song 
Broke out amongst us once again, 

As birds sing fresher notes among 

The sunshot woodlands after rain, 
And happier tones prolong, — 

So seemed it with the lyric heart 

Of human singers ; fresher aims 

Sprang in the wilderness of art, 
Serener pathos, nobler claims 
On man for his best part. 

The times are changed ; not Schumann now, 
But Wagner is our music-man, 



1870 — 71- 
Whose flutes and trumpets throb and glow 
With life, as when the world began 
Its genial ebb and flow. 
» 
The great god Pan redeified 

Comes, his old kingship to reclaim ; 
New hopes are spreading far and wide ; 
The lands were purged as with a flame, 
The year that Regnault died. 



DESIDERIUM. 

Sit there for ever, dear, and lean 

In marble as in fleeting flesh. 
Above the tall gray reeds that screen 

The river when the breeze is fresh ; 
For ever let the morning light 
Stream down that forehead broad and white, 
And round that cheek for my delight. 

Already that flushed moment grows 
So dark, so distant ; through the ranks 

Of scented reed the river flows 

Still murmuring to its willowy banks ; 

But we can never hope to share 



Desiderium. 213 

Again that rapture fond and rare, 
Unless you turn immortal there. 

There is no other way to hold 

These webs of mingled joy and pain ; 
Like gossamer their threads enfold 

The journeying heart without a strain, — 
Then break, and pass in cloud or dew. 
And while the ecstatic soul goes through 
Are withered in the parching blue. 

Hold, Time, a little while thy glass. 
And, Youth, fold up those peacock wings ! 

More rapture fills the years that pass 
Than any hope the future brings ; 

Some for to-morrow rashly pray, 

And some desire to hold to-day, 

But I am sick for yesterday. 



214 Desiderium. 

Since yesterday the hills were blue 
That shall be gray for evermore, 
And the fair sunset was shot through 

With color never seen before ! 
Tyrannic love smiled yesterday, 
And lost the terrors of his sway, 
But is a god again to-day. 

Ah ! who will give us back the past ? 

Ah ! woe, that youth should love to be 
Like this swift Thames that speeds so fast, 

And is so fain to find the sea, — 
That leaves this maze of shadow and sleep, 
These creeks down which blown blossoms creep, 
For breakers of the homeless deep. 

Then sit for ever, dear, in stone, 
As when you turned with half a smile, 



Desiderium. 215 

And I will haunt this islet lone, 

And with a dream my tears beguile ; 
And in my reverie forget 
That stars and suns were made to set, 
That love grows old, or eyes are wet. 



TIMASITHEOS. 

O for the gift to rise in full degree, 

Not like the showy fungus of a night, 
But fed witli soft delays, a branching tree ! 

Where now Olympia struggles to the light 

All ruin, a sacred city long profaned, 
Pausanias found amid the shining flight 



Of brilliant statues, all unspecked, unstained, 

One hewed about the face, and marred with mire, 
Still standing as by right, but deep disdained ; 



Timasitheos. 217 

And when the curious wanderer would inquire 
Whose beauteous antique shape was soiled and 
shamed, 
None there could tell save one white-bearded sire, 

Who answered : " This was one who, never tamed. 

With his swift thews won race on flashing race, 
Lightly : and Timasitheos was he named, 

" The Delphian, and from Phoebus so much grace 

He had, that all the Arcadian world extolled 
His manhood and the glory of his face ; 

" And from the lips of Phrynichus out-rolled 
Madness of song, praising his brazen feet, 
And tight curls closing like the marigold ; 



2 1 8 Timasitheos. 

" And Argive Ageladas, as was meet, 

Master of Pheidias, sculptured him, and set 
His statue in the ranks of strong and fleet ; 



" And three times at the Pythian games he met 

The athletes in the sinewy lists, and won, 
And through the dewy streets and meadows wet, 



" Went singing, crowned from the pancration, 
To Delphi, in a long procession borne, 

And met with songs, his city's dearest son." 



" Then why," Pausanias cried, " this mien forlorn, 

These injured garments, this dishonored head, 
Of all its light and carven beauty shorn ? " 



Tiniasitheos. 219 

To whom the old indifferent gray-beard said : 

" 'Twas long ago, before my grandsires' days, 
And he who knew our history best is dead. 



" But see this dim and gray inscription says : — 

" That * Timasitheos, traitor to the state, 
Lift up with pride and fallen on godless ways, 



" * By his fond physical strength intoxicate, 

Plotted with Kylon, and so meanly fell, 
Unstable, and the prey of envious fate.' " 



Too soon, too much adored f Ah ! much too well 

He cleft the winds and left the world behind ! 
Too fatal all the shapely miracle 



2 20 Timasitheos. 

Of his great limbs in faultless form combined ! 
Better, ah ! better far to have been less swift, 
More kindred to the earth, less to the wind ! 



For the gods hate not excellence, but lift 

The strong soul slowly on a great endeavor, 
And grace their own beloved, gift by gift, 



And with their sleepless eyes have wit to sever 

Man's lawful joy in power from pride of power, 
And hover round the loyal soul for ever ; 



But the hot insolent head they hold one hour 

High over the ranks of men, then dash it down, 
And laugh to see it kiss the dust and cower. 



Timasitheos. 221 

Let others leap straight to the forest-crown ! 

Slow growth, cool saps and temperate airs for me, 
And strength to stand when all the woods are brown. 



THE HOUSELEEK. 

Green houseleek, whose fair lady-love 
Is my white dove, 

Peer down from our slant tiled roof and see 
If in my garden any flower or tree 
Grows but for me ! 

Else will I scatter yellow peas, 

And at my ease 

Will woo thy soft companion to my feet. 

And in the darkness of my safe retreat 

Feel her heart beat ; 

And shut her in a golden cage, 
And mock thy rage, 



The Houseleek. 223 

Till thy red spikes of blossom day by day 

Beneath the winds and autumn suns decay, 

And fade away. 

• 

Round houseleek, squat upon the tiles, 

For miles and miles 

Thou canst gaze far and wide; look down for me 

And tell me what thy cunning leaf can see, 

Harsh though it be. 

The roses only live for pride ; 

The lilies died 

Because the rough moth troubled their pure bells ; 

Deep down within the columbine's blue cells 

Some sadness dwells, 

The jonquils only breathe for God ; 
A footstep trod 



2 24 The Hoiiseleck. 

The hopeful-hearted pansy down to death ; 
The honeysuckle overlavisheth 
Her rich and luscious breath. 

Only the violet I trust : 

Surely she must, 

Being so sweet, so modest and so free, 

And knowing how I love her utterly, 

Be true to me ? 

O tell me, houseleek, thou must know, 

Say, is it so ? 

Then may thy dove's pink feet upon the eaves 

Perch all day long beside thy patient leaves, 

While her throat grieves. 



EXPECTATION. 

When flower-time comes and all the woods are gay, 
When linnets chirrup and the soft winds blow, 
Adown the winding river I will row, 

And watch the merry maidens tossing hay. 

And troops of children shouting in their play. 
And with my thin oars flout the fallen snow 
Of heavy hawthorn-blossom as I go, 

And shall I see my love at fall of day 
When flower-time comes ? 

Ah, yes! for by the border of the stream 
She binds red roses to a trim alcove, 



2 26 Expectation. 

And I shall fade into her summer-dream 
Of musing upon love, — nay, even seem 
To be myself the very god of love. 
When flower-time comes ! 



MY OWN GRAVE. 
Imitated from Ronsard. 

When all my life is done 
Beneath the pleasant sun, 
When cold are breath and limb, 
And eyes grown dim, 

Before the whole live air 
Grows dead to me, prepare 
A cover for my face, 
A resting-place. 

Yet raise no splendid tomb, 
Nor o'er my dust find room 



2 28 My Own Grave. 

For blazoned words, but let 
The world forget. 

In some sequestered spot, 
Apart, concealed, remote, 
Blown round by multitudes 
Of breezy woods, 

Broad skies above my head, 
Green turf my body's bed, 
And, flowing by my side, 
A river wide. 

There let me too forget 
All sorrow, pain and fret, 
Made one with flowers and trees, 
And blithe like these. 



My Own Grave. 229 

Green spring, and sunlight shed 
On summer's golden head, 
Rich autumn warm with light, 
And winter white. 

Will bring, with various cheer, 
The sweet revolving year, 
And I shall rest below 

And scarcely know. 

Yet haply, when there shoots 
March life in crabbed roots. 
My heart shall wake to feel 
It upward steal. 

The new-fledged birds shall bring 
Me solace when they sing, 



230 -^y Own Grave. 

And stir the boughs that meet 
Above my feet. 

And when the bees in tune 
Hum dreamily of June, 
While over heaven on high 
Soft clouds float by, 

The long sweet grass will fade, 
And in brown swathes be laid 
By many a whistling scythe 
Of mowers blithe ; 

The men will whistle too 
Till twilight brings the dew, 
Then leave the fallen grass 
And homeward pass. 



My Own Grave. 231 

Their singing, low and sweet, 
Vibration of their feet, 
The sense of youth again, 

Will soothe my brain. 

With face and limbs and hair 
Dark on the misty air. 
They'll pass my dreaming eyes, 
When daylight dies. 

And e'er September's wind 
The elm-tree shade has thinned, 
When rushes droop, and reeds 
Shake out their seeds, 

When autumn sunsets make 
A glory through the brake, 



232 My Own Grave. 

And down the woodland glades 
The amber fades, 

Some maiden-heart on fire, 
Shamed with her new desire. 
Just waked to passionate will, 
And trembling still. 

Will come to hide her face 
With all its girlish grace, 
Where shining waters lave 

My greenwood grave. 

Her wealth of shining tress 
And glowing cheek will bless 
The cool fresh blades that start 
Out of my heart. 



My Oivn Grave. 233 

There silent, hushed, alone, 
No face to shame her own, 
She'll give her quivering breast 
One hour of rest. 

And I, perchance, who know 
So well the weal and woe 
Of love, and oft before 

Have taught its lore, 

Through stress of love may gain 
Some skill to quell her pain. 
And send through blade and flower 
Some magic power. 

Howe'er it be, I know 
That lying there below. 



234 ^^y Own Grave. 

My quiet dust will stir 
With joy in her ; 

That all her youth will be 
Like noonday rain to me, 
Her beauty like the sun 
When rain is done. 

Then let them shed no tear 
Who hold my memory dear, 
But pass and leave me there. 
In woodland air. 

Hemmed round by birds and bees. 
To haunt the murmuring trees, 
When all this life is done 
Beneath the sun. 



THE CRUISE OF THE ROVER. 

They sailed away one morning when sowing-time 
was over, 
In long red fields above the sea they left the 
sleeping wheat ; 
Twice twenty men of Devonshire who manned their 
ship the Rover, 
Below the little busy town where all the schooners 
meet. 



Their sweethearts came and waved to them, and 
filled with noise of laughter 
The echoing port below the cliff where thirty 
craft can ride ; 



236 The Cruise of the Rover. 

Each lad cried out, "Farewell to thee!" the cap- 
tain shouted after, 
" By God's help we'll be back again before the 
harvest-tide." 

They turned the Start and slipped along with speedy 
wind and weather ; 
Passed white Terceira's battlements, and, close 
upon the line, 
Ran down a little carrack full of cloth and silk and 
leather, 
And golden Popish images and good Madeira 
wine. 

The crew with tears and curses went tacking back 
to Flores ; 
The English forty cut the seas where none before 
had been, 



The Crttise of the Rover, 237 

And spent the sultry purple nights in English songs, 
and stones 
Of England, and her soldiers, and her Spaniard- 
hating Queen. 

At last the trade-wind caught them, the pale sharks 
reeled before them, 
The little Rover shot ahead across the western 
seas ; 
All night the larger compass of a tropic sky passed 
o'er them, 
Till they won the Mexique waters through a 
straight of banyan-trees. 

And there good luck befell them, for divers times 
they sighted 
The sails of Spanish merchantmen bound home- 
ward with their wares ; 



238 The Cruise of the Rover. 

And twice they failed to follow them, and once they 

stopped benighted ; 
But thrice the flag of truce flew out, and the 

scented prize was theirs. 

But midsummer was on them, with close-reef gales 
and thunder, 
Their heavy vessel wallowed beneath her weight 
of gold ; 
A long highway of oceai> kept them and home 
asunder, 
So back they turned towards England with a 
richly-laden hold. 

But just outside Tampico a man-of-war was riding, 
And all the mad young English blood in forty 
brains awoke, 



The Cruise of the Rover. 239 

The Rover chased the monster, and swiftly shore- 
wards gliding, 
Dipped down beneath the cannonade that o'er her 
bulwarks broke. 

Three several days they fought her, and pressed her 
till she grounded 
On the sandy isle of Carmen, where milky palm- 
trees grow ; 
Whereat she waved an ensign, a peaceful trumpet 
sounded. 
And all the Spaniards cried for truce, surrender- 
ing in a row. 

Alas ! the wiles and Jesuitries of scoundrel-hearted 
Spaniards, 
The Scarlet Woman dyes their hands in deeper 
red than hers. 



240 TJie Cruise of the Rover. 

For every scrap of white that decked their tacking 
and their lanyards 
Just proved them sly like devils and cowardls' 
like curs. 

^or out from countless coverts, from low palm- 
shaded islands, 
i'hat fledged in seeming innocence the smooth 
and shining main. 
The pinnaces came gliding and hemmed them round 
in silence, 
All manned with Indian bravos and whiskered 
dogs of Spain. 

The captain darted forwards, his fair hair streamed 
behind him, 
He shouted in his cheery voice, " For home and 
for the Queen !" 



TJie Cruise of the Rover. 241 

Three times he waved his gallant sword, but the 
flashes seemed to blind him, 
And a hard look came across his mouth where 
late a smile had been. 

We levelled with our muskets, and the foremost 
boat went under, 
The ship's boy seized a trumpet and blew a merry- 
blast ; 
The Spanish rats held off a while, and gazed at us 
in wonder. 
But the hindmost pushed the foremost on, and 
boarded us at last. 

They climbed the larboard quarter with their 
hatchets and their sabres ; 
The Devon lads shot fast and hard, and sank 
their second boat, 



242 The Cruise of the Rover. 

But the Popish hordes were legion, and Hercules his 

labors 
Are light beside the task to keep a riddled bark 

afloat. 

And twenty men had fallen, and the Rover's deck 
was reeling, 
And the brave young captain died in shouting 
loud " Elizabeth !" 
The Spaniards dragged the rest away, just while the 
ship was heeling, 
Lest she should sink and rob them of her sailors' 
tortured breath. 

For they destined them to perish in a slow and cruel 
slaughter, 
A feast for monks and Jesuits too exquisite to 
lose ; 



The Cruise of the Rover. 243 

So they caught the English sailors as they leaped 
into the water, 
And a troop of horse as convoy brought them 
north to Vera Cruz. 

They led them up a sparkling beach of burning sand 
and coral, 
They dragged the brave young Englishmen like 
hounds within a leash ; 
They passed beneath an open wood of leaves that 
smelt of laurel, 
Bound close together, each to each, with cords 
that cut the flesh. 

And miles and miles along the coast they tramped 
beneath no cover, 
Till in their mouths each rattling tongue was like 
a hard, dry seed, 



244 "^^^^ Cruise of the Rover. 

And ere they came to Vera Cruz, when that long 

day was over, 
The coral cut their shoes to rags, and made them 

wince and bleed. 

Then as they clambered up the town, the jeering 
crowd grew thicker. 
And laughed to see their swollen feet and figures 
marred and bent, 
And women with their hair unloosed stood under- 
neath the flicker 
Of torch and swinging lantern, and cursed them 
as they went. 

And three men died of weariness before they 
reached the prison. 
And one fell shrieking with the pain of a poniard 
in the back. 



The Cruise of the Rover. 245 

And when dawn broke in the morning three other 
souls had risen 
To bear the dear Lord witness of the hellish -r 

Spaniard pack. 

But the monks girt up their garments, the friars 
bound their sandals, 
They hurried to the market-place with faggots of 
dry wood, 
And the acolytes came singing, with their incense 
and their candles. 
To offer to their images a sacrifice of blood. 

But they sent the leech to tend them, with his pouch 
and his long phial. 
And the Jesuits came smiling, with honeyed 
words at first, 



246 The Cruise of the Rove?-. 

For they dared not burn the heretics without some 

show of trial, 
And the English lads were dying of poisoned air 

and thirst. 

So they gave them draughts of water from a great 
cold earthen firkin, 
And brought them to the courtyard, where the 
tall hidalgo sat. 
And he looked a gallant fellow in his boots and his 
rough jerkin, 
With the jewels on his fingers, and the feather in 
his hat. 

And he spoke out like a soldier, for he said, "Ye 
caught them fighting, 
They met you with the musket, by the musket 
they shall fall ; 



The Cruise of the Rover. 247 

They are Christians in some fashion, and the pile 
you're bent on lighting 
Shall blaze with none but Indians, or it shall not 
blaze at all." 

So they led them to a clearing in the wood outside 
the city, 
Struck off the gyves that bound them, and freed 
each crippled hand, 
And dark-eyed women clustered round and mur- 
mured in their pity. 
But won no glance nor answer from the steadfast 
English band. 

For their lives rose up before them in crystalline 
completeness, 
And they lost the flashing soldiery, the sable 
horde of Rome, 



248 The Cruise of the Rover. 

And the great magnolias round them, with wave 
on wave of sweetness, 
Seemed just the fresh profusion and hawthorn 
lanes of home. 

They thought about the harvests, and wondered 
who would reap them ; 
They thought about the little port where thirty 
craft can ride ; 
They thought about their sweethearts, and prayed 
the Lord to keep them. 
They kissed each other silently, and hand in hand 
they died. 



EPILOGUE. 

If thou disdain the sacred muse, 
Beware lest Nature, past recall, 

Indignant at that crime, refuse 

Thee entrance to her audience-hall. 
Beware lest sea, and sky, and all 

That bears reflection of her face 
Be blotted with a hueless pall 

Of unillumined commonplace. 

The moving heavens, in rhythmic time. 
Roll, if thou watch them or refrain ; 

The waves upon the shore in rhyme 
Beat, heedless of thy loss or gain ; 



250 Epilogue. 

Not they, but thou, hast lived in vain, 
If thou art deaf and blind and dumb, 

Parched in the heart of morning rain, 
And on the flaming altar numb. 

Ah ! desolate hour when that shall be, 

When dew and sunlight, rain and wind, 
Shall seem but trivial things to thee, 

Unloved, unheeded, undivined ; 

Nay, rather let that morning find 
Thy molten soul exhaled and gone. 

Than in a living death resigned 
So darkly still to labor on. 



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